It rather feels like a reckoning is coming. The bar strike has highlighted the collapse of the criminal justice system as a whole and the intolerable strain it has put on defence lawyers. It is the last dance.

We cannot continue with a system where barrister fees have fallen nearly 30 per cent over the past two decades. It is frankly a disgrace that junior counsel earn just £12,200 in their first three years of call – well below the living wage. At times, it feels impossible to book counsel and that is hardly surprising when 22 per cent of junior barristers have left the criminal bar since 2016.

For criminal solicitors, the position is equally dire. Rates have fallen since 1997 – that’s right, they have fallen for 25 years! We are in a recruitment crisis. The long hours, difficult cases and low pay have seen solicitors choose other specialisms, with nearly 600 providers stopping criminal legal aid work altogether since 2012.

The government has frankly ignored the recommendations of its own criminal legal aid review and proposed lower than recommended increases, which will take years to take effect. The modest increases are only allowed for new cases, which may not be heard until late 2023 or even later due to the backlog in the courts.

It is a mess – and one that has a human cost. Those of us who have dedicated our lives to this work are exhausted. It is a punishing and pressurised schedule. If we are not careful, then an independent criminal defence lawyer, funded from the public purse, will belong to another era. Being a criminal lawyer will become the preserve of the wealthy, funded by the bank of mum and dad. The profession will not be open to all. Few, if any, graduates with crippling debt will see criminal law as an attractive option, while other areas of law offer riches. Instead, being a lawyer will be the preserve of the children of professionals – the earned aristocracy.

Or many will see publicly-funded work as just an entry point, allowing them to step on to commercial practice or the Crown Prosecution Service. At Hodge Jones & Allen, we have turned over about 50 per cent of our workforce like this in the past few years. I would not have made it as a lawyer now, nor countless of the best lawyers I know.

Whatever the lament of the professionals, a public service such as legal aid cannot be governed solely by the payment scheme for its workers. We serve a public interest in ensuring that trials are conducted fairly and efficiently. Yet a system that pays its professionals below the living wage risks injustice and delay. Miscarriages of justice will become more common and delay more likely as the justice system shifts from one crisis to another.

So the battle led by Criminal Bar Association chair Jo Sidhu QC and vice-chair Kirsty Brimelow QC matters to us all. It is about the future of the justice system as a whole. And there are plenty of folk who are willing to take up arms. I have never seen a younger generation so motivated and, in a way, so radicalised. The Ministry of Justice has just pushed them too far and many feel that they have little to lose.

To misquote Neil Kinnock, I warn you not to be accused of a criminal offence or to be the victim of one. I warn you not to be investigated or arrested by the police. I warn you not to be stopped and searched by the police. I warn you not to be Asian or Black and have contact with the criminal justice system, and I warn you not to be charged or face a trial.