The Hamlyn Lectures: Lawyers and the Public Good – Democracy in Action?

If they should read the 2012 Hamlyn Lectures, hard-pressed practitioners will learn that the lawyers' profession is 'a social construct'. They may not be vastly impressed. This penetrating insight will not assist them much as they toil meeting deadlines they find intolerable, complying with procedures they find frustrating, to satisfy clients they find unappreciative. And too often for a measly reward.

But impressed they should be, because social constructs can be socially deconstructed. And deconstruction you may think, as courts close and budgets are slashed, is all around us. Paterson is not given to apocalyptic language. He deliberately avoids it. "What has been happening in the last 30 years is neither the death of professionalism nor of the profession, but the replacement of an outmoded model of professionalism."

Maybe that is right. But, as he concedes, there are commentators aplenty who are prepared to administer the last rites. He quotes Professors Richard Abel and Albert Kritzer who have suggested the professions are either in terminal decline or already dead. But he sets up these doom-sayers just to knock them down.

Access to justice of course requires competent lawyers, adequate legal aid, and independent judges. These form the subjects of his three main lectures. He examines each before writing off the pessimists. He suggests lawyers are going to provide services through new business structures accountable to professional bodies improved with greater lay representation and that legal aid has a future, but we shall need "a coalition of the willing" and to "be nimble of foot". Telling phrases: a different coalition will sort out those who don't run fast enough.

As for judges, he compares the old House of Lords and the new Supreme Court in great detail. He provides a painstaking analysis of the development of judicial reasoning. He appears to be generally pleased with what he finds. Not that he is complacent: he says there is scope for improvement, in particular with the selection process. He favours US- style confirmations where candidates may be politely asked questions about their legal careers and outlook. He is critical of a decision taken that judges should not have a Register of Interests.

Oddly the Crown Prosecution Service gets hardly a mention. Conceivably that is because it is hard to perceive it as an improvement on an "outmoded model of professionalism", unless of course the complete eradication of any traditional notion of professional responsibility and its replacement with a monstrous regiment of box-ticking bureaucrats constitutes some form of advance.

We have yet to see whether Paterson's comforting assurances on legal aid will make any sense after the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill has become law. Members of the LAPG doubt it. As for the judges, Paterson does well to concentrate his attention on the uppermost reaches of the judiciary and the resources made available there. Experience at the other end of the scale is of a system close to meltdown.

It's not all white-wash. Paterson does attack greedy lawyers. Who doesn't? But putting the book down older practitioners will be left wondering how any detached objective academic might formulate so optimistic an assessment. Younger lawyers anxious to believe they can look forward to paying off their law school debts will be reassured by what they read.

This book is for them. For legal services to have a future it is vital the next generation of lawyers believes one is possible. Their clients (and the government) should be grateful to Paterson for encouraging that belief.