A little bit of a prediction I'd made to myself back in my dim and distant past as a cub reporter had finally come true.
In those terrible days we journalists would gather in a pub across the road from the crown court and discuss cases with the on-duty barristers and solicitors, receiving juicy little titbits about the clients and their crimes in exchange for another G&T or so (this was during the extended lunch break after the judge had been chauffeured to the nearest five-star eaterie and wasn't expected back for an hour or so).
Intimate secrets were revealed, the alcohol level in their bloodstream topped up and once the mutual back-slapping farewells were completed, the highly paid and much-respected professionals stepped back into the courtroom while we journos planned which legal cases we'd try to cover for the next few days.
What clearly struck me at the time, certainly among the crowd of free-drinking legals that we mixed with and paid for, was the contempt they had for their clients.
"Doesn't it bother you, defending this obviously guilty felon?" I'd ask in naive amazement.
"No," came the bemused reply. "We're not supposed to make judgments – we just get the next one who comes up on the list and do the best for them we can."
It was explained to me that this duty to portray their clients as innocent or in the best possible light, right or wrong, was the highest moral code to which a legal eagle could aspire – truth and honesty were not important.
And, of course, if they got these guilty parties off then it was a feather in their cap.
I didn't like it then and I don't like it now.
Now, to work properly, society needs a clear structure of rights and wrongs; checks and balances, freedoms and restrictions.
Not everyone may agree with every single aspect but, without this framework there is no society.
Since my days as an innocent reporter, I've watched as Christianity has been sidelined until the old morality that underlay our legal system ceased to be the key foundation upon which British legal "justice" was constructed. European laws based on vague concepts of individual rights have replaced them.
This new framework had no legal precedents, so there was a vacuum that hungry and ambitious members of the legal profession eagerly rushed to fill, chasing clients and creating new types of victim to fill in and push out the vague boundaries of "Human Rights" legislation.
They grabbed billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to fight these cases, and some have become very, very rich.
In the wake of their money-grabbing actions, however, they've left a few victims of their own – and these are starting to fight back.
Families who failed to win compensation cases when they were encouraged to believe the MMR jab had damaged their children are suing their lawyers, accusing them of dishonesty, selling false dreams, misleading clients and using bogus knowledge.
Of course there are solicitors who don't chase the money, just as there are TV presenters who don't abuse children, policemen who don't frame innocent people and doctors who don't kill their patients.
But everyone else – even journalists – has faced public hostility with demands for reform, greater punishment and easier ways to kick out "bad apples" ,so it's about time the same happened to the legals. There's a lot that needs to change.
Virgers, however, are squeaky clean.
Neil Pickford: by day a mild-mannered virger: by night…he walks the streets and tries to make sense of it all. You can read more of Neil's various meanderings at his website • ThePickfordPapers