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There's nothing new in this. When I was a young assistant solicitor, well over thirty years ago, in a time when you could make a living doing magistrates' court crime and sourcing clients through the duty solicitor scheme (police station and court) membership , there was another solicitor, practising in the same town as me, who regularly hoovered up the best of the defendants in custody, before the rest of us had a chance of access to them, and not infrequently I lost clients to her before the second remand hearing or further down the line. The word on the street was that this was a consequence of the custody sergeants and the court gaolers being well supplied with bottles of whisky and packs of 200 cigarettes. But proof was another thing. So nothing was said and that solicitor continued to use the same strategy and thus get a disproportionate share of the town's decent crime for many years thereafter. Me, I gave up crime, as did many of my contemporaries. So maybe, unintentionally, she did me a favour!