DAVID Sharples, regional secretary of North West Law Society, claims legal support for poor people is under threat from government plans to reduce the number of law firms who can help people on legal aid (Citizen, April 29).

Actually legal aid has been under threat since is was created. Such people - and the system itself - has been used as a milk cow for decades by greedy solicitors with their snouts in the trough.

That's my experience of Preston's solicitors, with just one exception. These people cost me fortune and, thanks to their failures, my son.

I've just learned of a case of industrial asbestosis, now dragging on five years. Bear in mind that case law has already been established at the factory concerned, about two years ago as I can recall. I would have expected a straight-forward case of this nature to take no more than 18 months.

Instead, the poor man's widow has each month been paying towards legal aid costs, hoping to receive compensation for the death of her spouse.

On top of that, she appears to have become lumbered with a duffer solicitor handling the case. That, Mr Sharples, is under the current system of legal aid.

As for those solicitors who let me and my son down in the past, revenge is a dish best served cold.

E Sanderson, Preston

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