I was disappointed to read that court dress will no longer be required in some civil courts, but pleased to read in Scottish Legal News that not everything thinks this is a good idea.

As a young woman lawyer in the 1980s, all the court officials assumed I was a witness when I arrived at court because the lawyers were almost all male. I was chased along the hall at Glasgow Sheriff Court many years later for daring to head towards the stairs.

I was stopped from getting on a bus full of men taking Faculty deans and secretaries to lunch until the then Secretary of the Law Society of Scotland, Kenneth Pritchard, identified me as a person entitled to board the bus.

None of these things happen when wearing a bar gown because everyone knows you are a solicitor. I wonder if it is only men who think the removal of this “uniform” is a good thing?

Dorothy McGhie