Professionals in the arts of persuasion, legal advocates have been singularly unsuccessful these last two decades in winning a fair hearing for their own trade. The right to silence, the assault upon judicial review or – the focus of yesterday's lawyerly protest – the dismantling of legal aid have all stirred the same Rumpole-style speech: "The ancient rights of free Englishman have not been so threatened, since some particularly heinous deed of Charles I ...".

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