Letter: Traditional dress for lawyers and crooks

Sir: What makes the Bar a sartorial Aunt Sally is not that it has a special dress - for which a good case can be made - but that this is perversely antique, costly and inconvenient.

Whatever new legal rig emerges from Lord Mackay's infusion of Scottish reason into this English nonsense, it will still disguise fewer incompetent lawyers than there are crooks daily masquerading in that conformist, outdated and often misleading uniform, the 'respectable' business suit.

Not even juries, witnesses and defendants are required to wear that nowadays.

Yours sincerely,

PIETER VAN DER MERWE

London, SE10