It is unfortunate that the Law Society limits its criticism of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates to the idea that judges should evaluate advocates. Instead it should have addressed Lord Justice Moses’ suggestion in his Ebsworth lecture that it is impossible to evaluate the qualities necessary to make a good advocate. He says that advocacy should be subsumed into the continuing professional development system.

There has been no resistance by the bar, the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Society to the requirement that advocates should be ‘marked’ either by a judicial or a bureaucratic assessment system. Both systems, said Moses LJ, will be flawed and expensive. The government is likely to succeed in producing professional poodles by exploiting the fears and jealousies inherent in the tension that exists between the bar and solicitor-advocates. As to that, Lord Justice Moses says quite clearly that we stand or fall together.

Three years ago I challenged the assumption by the then president of the Society that any resistance to the QASA proposals would be futile. The president’s reply was: ‘The bar is cooperating so we must do so as well’. We should surely unite to resist, not to surrender.

Hugh A Cauthery, solicitor-advocate, Wisbech