Wigs have finally gone — at least in the family and civil courts — after one of the longest-running debates in the legal profession. Circuit judges, however, have hung on to theirs and wigs and gowns remain in criminal courts. But what do students think about legal dress?

It is only a matter of time, believes Professor Gary Slapper, director of the Centre for Law at the Open University, before “the old practice looks deeply anachronistic to a new generation. It will be like when City gents and toffs stopped going out in bowler hats.”

Harry Nosworthy, a College of Law student in London who is taking his Graduate Diploma in Law, studying criminal, tort, family, commercial, contract, company and land law, disagrees. “In my opinion — and this seems to be the case with many of my peers — it’s a great shame that this ancient tradition is being abolished.

“One of the appeals of seeking a career at the Bar is the wearing of the prestigious and traditional dress. The dress allows one to identify the advocates in court, creating an arena for debate and justice. It undoubtedly contributes to the authority of the court.”

He also believes that there is a case to be made for identification — “although perhaps this does not apply in lower-level smaller hearings or trials in the family and civil divisions.”

His brother Jonathan, already a barrister at St Philips Chambers, Birmingham, also favours traditional garb.

“The wig and gown, and collars and bands, can be a bit of a nuisance. The collars are uncomfortable and the wig can get itchy when it’s hot.

“Having to change into costume also can be a bit of a pain on the first day of a trial when one’s thoughts are focused on the issues in case and taking last-minute instructions. That said, I like to see the traditional dress worn and I think it useful in the Crown Court [where wigs are retained] because, to some extent, it masks the identity of counsel.”

Yet Simon Bennett, an intellectual property rights solicitor with Arnold & Porter in London, says that he is not sure that it is important to have traditional dress.

“Justice should be accessible to all and the use of wigs, etc, can be seen as an impediment to such access.”

Graham Zellick, law professor and chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in Birmingham, sees it as “the death of an emblematic symbol respected by one and all”, while Robert Lipfriend, the son of the late Alan Lipfriend, a judge, says, tongue in cheek, that in the 21st century “we need something serious. And what could be more serious than grown men wearing long wigs made of horse hair?”

Meanwhile, what do outsiders think? Alex Jablonowski, a management consultant and former City banker with a modern languages degree from the University of St Andrews, says: “The wigs are antiquated like the profession itself — the last unreconstructed of the professions, inward looking, inefficient and out of touch.”

James Poole, a Cambridge natural sciences graduate and former Sunday Times journalist, now retired, agrees. “It’s impossible sufficiently to lampoon English law and lawyers. The whole caboodle. When people get worked up about being able to tell the difference in court between barristers and solicitors, the louse and the flea come to mind. In any case, it’s easy. Solicitors are the efficient part of the process — they do the work — while barristers would claim to be dignified ‘experts’. ”

Jonathan and Harry Nosworthy are among a dying breed of legal families in which sons follow fathers into the profession. Their family includes Andrew Nosworthy, who works for a US law firm in the City, and Simon Nosworthy, who works for his father George Nosworthy, in the family law firm in East Finchley, North London.

If student Harry is right, future generations of lawyers may favour a return to wigs in all courts.

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