The public and the Bar can rest assured in the knowledge that it has a regulator looking after the public’s best interests, going by the high impact supervision returns report the Bar Standards Board published last week. We have been looking systematically, carefully, expertly, independently and fearlessly at what the Bar does. We are pleased to assure the public that the vast majority of barristers are doing a great job.

Today is a special day for all Back to the Future fans, and for those who don’t know or haven’t seen a newspaper today, 21 October 2015 is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future. It’s worth looking at the film’s predictions and identifying what was made a reality, and what we have lived through or grown up with in terms of technological change.

A few months ago Google added car insurance to its ‘Google Compare’ suite of products, products which Google says are designed to help people make confident and more informed financial decisions. Did those in the insurance industry see this coming? Probably. Can they do much about it? Probably not. Are they worried by it? I should say so. So I pose this question. What if Google decided to launch a full range consumer legal services business in the UK tomorrow?

A cynic looking at the government’s consultation on “preserving and enhancing the quality of criminal advocacy” might well feel that Lord Chancellor Michael Gove was deliberately trying to foment trouble between the Bar and solicitors to divide and rule. It would be easy to characterise the proposals as giving the Bar what it wants by ‘doing something’ about those money-grabbing solicitors encroaching on the Bar’s patch. It’s hard to see anything that solicitors will like about them.

Legal Futures has gained exclusive access to what is believed to be the transcript of a secret meeting held recently between Lord Chancellor Michael Gove and a delegation from the Bar Council.