is true that a solicitor has the knowledge that he may be answerable in a court of law for want of skill in looking after his client’s interests, but a client does not always know this. Indeed, even the most rudimentary knowledge in connection with the law and its practice is absent in the average person who goes to a solicitor for advice. And yet the solicitor’s own knowledge is frequently little above that of a mature office-boy, though he generally manages to apply it to his own personal profit, at any rate! One does not tar all solicitors with the same brush: there are many worthy exceptions; still, there is something in the profession of a solicitor which seems to produce certain generic failings.[34] The bad name of the profession in the eyes of the public is not altogether unfounded; it is something more than a cheap superstition or tradition. It gathers force when one comes into frequent contact with some firms, which are licensed to practice the law. The size of the offices and the number of persons employed are not criteria of honesty: one knows of cases where seemingly prosperous firms in the best and most central districts are no more trustworthy than the solitary tottering scamp who struggles in a meagre garret. On the other hand, it is a gamble to go to any solicitor, unless one has definite evidence in advance that he is reputed to be just and honest in his methods--and has practised his business for some years. There is no scoundrel like an old scoundrel, of course, but a well-established firm is _primâ facie_ better equipped with the requirements of a client than some new firm which has not yet quite felt its feet. Long established firms go wrong like newly-established ones, though they are perhaps, generally speaking, less liable to, as they have more to lose, if the practices they have carried on have been reputable. As a partial standard of guidance it is, therefore, wise to go to an old firm rather than to a new one. But general reputation, and recommendation by former clients, are, after all, the best means of judging such questions off-hand. One recalls an instance where a King’s Counsel, retired from practice, recommended and upheld in obvious ignorance a most shady firm, which, however, had exceedingly well-illuminated, large, and central offices! With such an example in one’s memory, where one knows the firm to be dishonest, one can but fear that the best recommendations are apt to err.