It is easy to take cheap shots at cheap lawyers, especially when they weasel themselves out of drink driving scenarios or chase young fiscals out of the courtroom. But as Austin points out, honesty and integrity are rarely reported

I remember a fantastic story about Lionel Daiches QC. For younger readers he was not just the Donald Findlay of his day, but a veritable institution in the profession. He was also a luncher of monumental proportions, a stylish and urbane gentleman, a man with the ear of the court and frankly a toff. The court would wait on him if he was a moment or two late coming back from luncheon, and if he was red-faced in the afternoon session of a murder trial, that was only with, er, the intensity of his search for justice. In cross-examining witnesses or addressing the bench he had the grand manner, and could pepper his remarks with literary or cultural allusions and always the mot juste.

He once had to travel to the USA in the company of other lawyers. Even in those days the American customs and immigration officials were alert for those who had no business in the US, and a group of professional types were subject to the third degree. One by one the Scots were body-searched, until Daiches stepped forward. He was asked his name and his details, and as one official moved towards him to conduct the frisk, the supervisor held up his hand and said, “not him. He’s class.” and Mr. Daiches was allowed to sail forward unmolested.

As well as being a tale about a famous QC, this story is told wistfully. I doubt very many lawyers have even the honour in their own land that Daiches got abroad. Indeed, bringing you right up to date, the lawyer as almost quasi-villain is portrayed in a new crime novel, Daisy Chain, by solicitor Gary Moffat of Burness, in which the hero is a solicitor enmeshed in the murky world of money laundering. I heard Gary being interviewed by Alex Dickson on Smooth Radio (Alex of the rounded vocal tones and homely banter was my first ever media boss and gave me my chance to start the on-air advice ball rolling in about 1983) and wish him good sales for what is a brilliant debut story, but it is also a bit depressing that it has come to this in the real world – we solicitors can be locked up with the villains if we fail to spot that they are up to no good and shop them to the busies.

That is the formal position we are in. You can be herded in with the crims not even for doing anything, but if you fail to be vigilant enough to spot a (potential!) involvement in criminal activity. So the polis cannae catch them but can make us the next best body to lock up. To them we are now just neds in suits.

Our image now takes a regular kicking too. In the tabloid paper I am reading online while composing this blog, I read of a procurator fiscal depute acquitted of drunk driving - sleeping lawfully in her car with no intention to drive while sadly drunk – having to rehearse in open court, and thus in the papers the pain and unhappiness of her private life that drover her to overindulgence, to the salivation of a media looking for trouble.

And in the same paper, I read, as I have read elsewhere of a depute fleeing the court after her treatment at the hands of a scolding sheriff. Actually that one saddened me for a different reason though. I remember as a young solicitor being mildly terrified of some of the cantankerous old warhorses on the bench, and heard more than a few harangues that would have made Stalin tremble, but I had thought those confrontational attitudes had more or less disappeared. It was sad to read of a young female fiscal being made to feel so afraid that she wept and left the court.

Anyway, the point is that no longer are we of the legal persuasion universally afforded a Place in society. No matter how much a harsh sheriff might shout at us in court, this was within our profession. The dignity in which the family lawyer or the high street solicitor was held by the rest of society has diminished to at best a grudging acceptance, and at worst, a you’re-no-better-than-me attitude. Perhaps the whole of society has gone this way, and the tabloid papers just reflect the expectations of their readers. A lawyer is fair game for reports of misbehaviour or misfortune, and stories of lawyers acting as badly as their clients has some kind of journalistic frisson that adds to the appeal of the story.

Virtue, duty, trustworthiness are not news. And while lawyers who misbehave are deserving of scorn, lawyers (i.e. the vast, vast majority) who contribute to their clients’, or their employers’ - and certainly society’s - welfare, should be deserving of an actual, visible respect. We are the body who keep the lynch mob from the door, and who really are the oil that lets the wheel of justice turn, no matter how slowly.

But no such person gets respect. There is only the ersatz apotheosis of the undeserving, embodied in Jade Goody, Gawd rest her soul, and whoever is the current mis-shapen crooner on Britain’s Got talent. We have lost respect and substituted vapid fanaticism. Fame is the spur, and the aspiration of youngsters now is to be a WAG instead of achieving a professional or trade qualification. Yes, Britain’s got talent in fact, but most of it is being wasted. And when I hear of Renfrewshire Council’s recently reported swingeing cuts in their music education budget, sounding the death-knell for numerous bands and orchestral music teaching in schools where staff are hard-pressed to keep any academic standards flying, dumbing–down a respectable institution is now policy.

Ok it’s not only lawyers who are reduced in status. Other professions, strata, persons, are diminished, and unless you are famous for being famous and have a lot of undeserved material possessions, or can titillate the media by your indiscretions, you are nothing. Our whole society is relentlessly cheapening. We are coming to the last days of ancient Rome. No-one deserves respect unless it is earned. But we in this business earn our spurs day after day after day when we protect the public and/or our clients. And the day will come when we and others who hold the world together will arrive at the point that it is no longer worth the candle. And then it will be too late.

Austin