So you’re coming to the end of your first year as COLP and things haven’t gone too badly so far, but don’t count your chickens (or geese) yet. Danger lies ahead – the Christmas season looms. Now’s the time to earn your compliance officer stripes; let’s risk assess the joy out of Christmas, snuff out spontaneity and spread caution amongst your fellow man.

If anyone wanted to see what alternative business structures can achieve, they need look no further than Slater & Gordon. If you take into account the sum announced as going towards buying Simpson Millar – a deal currently on ice – S&G has committed around £150m towards its UK expansion since first announcing the acquisition of Russell Jones & Walker in January 2012. Could it have achieved this without being a listed company? I’m no financial expert, but I doubt it; raising money through share issues has been key, although debt levels are up sharply as well.

Recent press coverage has suggested that it’s a sellers’ market for personal injury caseloads, with acquirers queuing up. Sellers just don’t realise it, and consequently don’t receive a fair value for their files. I would like to offer a more balanced view and suggest this is something of a misnomer and can in fact be quite damaging to sellers. There may well be a significant number of firms aspiring to be acquirers out there, but the reality is the vast majority of these are either day-dreamers or tyre-kickers.

It’s been more than a decade since the last Law Society special general meeting (SGM), called by high-profile civil liberties solicitor Imran Khan over the Kamlesh Bahl affair and allegations of institutional racism. Though very different, next month’s SGM, debating a motion of no confidence in the president and chief executive, also goes to the heart of Chancery Lane, if not quite as painfully. I am not going to debate the rights and wrongs of the Law Society’s position on criminal legal aid. What I will say is that is that it did not make the easy choice by deciding to negotiate with the government – that would have been to fall into line with the absolute opposition of the specialist criminal solicitor groups and the bar.

The issue of insisting on lay chairs to head of the frontline legal regulators, as was proposed by the Legal Services Board (LSB) in a consultation that ends next week, has sparked predictable opposition among the targeted regulators. That the LSB should try to push through such a potentially explosive change to internal governance rules at a time when it has just been pummelled in a series of bruising responses submitted to the Ministry of Justice’s regulatory review, shows bullishness on the part of the oversight regulator.