Geoffrey Bindman says it’s time for the profession to move into the 21st century
So much of the effectiveness of the legal system—and indeed of any organisation—depends on the customs and habitual behaviour of its practitioners. When I began to make contact with members of the legal profession as a law student in the 1950s I was confronted by a powerful culture of deference and tribal loyalty. This was illustrated by the elaborately archaic language used by lawyers in talking to each other, especially in court, and by the social distance, amounting to a kind of segregation, observed by the different classes of lawyer. Clerks (now called legal executives) did not mix with solicitors. Solicitors did not mix with barristers. Barristers did not mix with judges.
And of course the means of entering each of these groups was equally segregated. The professionally qualified would usually have come from the privately educated middle and upper classes. Their behaviour reflected the traditions of their upbringing.
First contact
As a law student at Oxford I had my first contact with the legal hierarchy when
