I visit a lot of different businesses in the course of my job – both law firms and other types of organisations. This gives me a unique opportunity to compare how the legal sector is shaping up against the commercial world in how they welcome visitors to their business, and it’s fair to say that those that go the extra mile certainly stand out.

We at the Bar Standards Board (BSB) are proposing to make big changes in training for the Bar and want your views. The Future Bar Training programme was set up by the BSB in 2014 in response to the Legal Education and Training Review. The aim of the programme is to ensure that training for the Bar is flexible, accessible and affordable while sustaining high standards.

What does it take to shape a high-quality client experience? How do you encourage effective and long-term client/adviser relationships? What is the role of the marketing department in achieving this? These are the questions that every professional services marketer should contemplate with a view to taking personal action. For me, nothing can be more important than truly understanding the activities and actions that can deliver a more satisfied client.

I recently found myself in the frozen food aisle of Tesco making the big decision – Ben & Jerry’s, or Häagen-Dazs? As a product I can’t ‘try before I buy’, I realised I was making a decision based upon brand, and my awareness of the two. Unknown to most, Ben & Jerry’s was originally the underdog to Häagen-Dazs, but with its creative marketing and branding, it quickly accelerated its growth and became incredibly successful in a market that was rather saturated.

With the government, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Legal Services Board, the Law Society and the legal services regulators all flashing their sequined blouses like contestants on Strictly Dumb Downing, the idea of leaving a ‘secure’ job and setting up a new law firm is likely to feature alongside bareback-rodeo and base-jumping on most people’s personal risk register. So it’s surprising that recent SRA data shows a significant net increase in UK law firms year on year. What, you may ask, is driving such risky behaviour and what are the hallmarks of a successful start-up?