SIR – I disagree strongly with Terry Tordoff (Letters, January 15). Any reduction in legal aid worries me. Few people who are charged with an offence (criminal or traffic) know how to present their own case, and some are amazingly inarticulate.

We should consider the cost of running the court, which operates much quicker and more efficiently if provided with a good prosecutor and a good defence solicitor.

Otherwise, much time is wasted by the confused ramblings of bewildered defendants who may not even know whether to plead guilty or not guilty, as used to be the situation back in the 1950s.

By the way, I am not a lawyer.

L A Hobsbaum, Willow Crescent, Bradford