There's more about lawyers' contribution to society in the law reports than the tabloids

Even the closure of Tooks, with its lawyers who have acted for families caught up in notorious injustices, has been trumpeted by some as a victory for hardworking taxpayers.

When was the last time you read a positive news story about lawyers in the popular press? For me, at a time when 1,000 small legal practices have ceased trading in the last year, ?it grates more than ever that some of the most challenging legal work undertaken by ?our rank and file continues to escape public attention. Here ?is just one recent example: a care hearing at Bristol County Court, which involved a brother and sister aged three and two. The brother lived with their grandmother, but the sister ?had been placed in temporary foster care because the grandmother felt unable to look after both children. The local authority opposed her application to be the boy's special guardian, but later withdrew its objections. Care and placement orders were issued for the little girl. The case took 58 weeks to resolve.

"Things have gone badly wrong", said the judge, highlighting among other things the unnecessary delays and the absence of direct evidence for the local authority's concerns. He concluded: "the really sad upshot of this case is that these two young children will be brought up separately."

So far, so bad, but for some solicitors this is the reality ?of everyday working life - and how different that is from the popular perception of lawyers' lots. In the Bristol case the names of the advocates were omitted, but the judge concluded that counsel for the local authority had "borne the difficulties that arose with professionalism, courtesy and consideration."
When I read that final line ?in the judgment, my thoughts also went out to the unnamed solicitors involved in the case. What difficult and admirable jobs they do, wading into situations such as these, doing their best and battling on in cases where where there can ?be no winners.

The details of such cases are kept confidential - they have to be - and so the important work of solicitors and other legal professionals must, necessarily, take place in the shadows. But what a shame that large swathes of the general public remain oblivious to the valuable and, ?in many cases, modestly-renumerated work undertaken by solicitors in real life, away from the headlines.
If every child matters, doesn't every case count? In such a vacuum, no wonder the tabloid press gets away with describing us as "armies of greedy, ?overpaid lawyers".
The final irony is that despite the disparity in page views, ?Bailii.org contains more by ?way of "colour", conflict and human interest than Mail Online ever will.