We all know the headlines: small firms under pressure; reforms beginning to bite; professional indemnity insurance becoming more uncertain; takeovers and mergers on the cards as consolidation sees big firms getting bigger, smaller firms getting knocked out. Then there’s conveyancing and other commoditised services being bundled and provided by big players, which is threatening smaller firms; or the likely polarisation of services in the changing market, with law firms focused on specialisation to get economies of scale. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you know where you are – in the UK in the year 2000…

The Legal Services Board’s call last week for an “open debate” on the cost of regulation will not have gone down a storm at Chancery Lane, I’d wager. The part of the practising fees most under threat from such a conversation is surely the 24% that goes to the Law Society for work that is essentially representative in nature but seen as being sufficiently in the public interest for solicitors to fund via compulsory levy. For now, anyway.

It’s often said that life’s not a popularity contest – which is probably just as well if you’re the compliance officer for legal practice (COLP) for your firm. As a lawyer, the best that can be said about your popularity rating with the general public is that it’s not as bad as estate agents or tax inspectors. The COLP role comes with the added distinction of being unpopular within your peer group. But your main crime against popularity is yet to come—from January 2013 you have to become head monitor and supergrass for your firm.

It has taken around five years to reach the point of publishing the names of firms against whom complaints are made. A process begun by the Legal Complaints Service and then handed on, with some relief, to the Legal Ombudsman, it has caused much huffing, puffing and argument. My initial reaction was how underwhelming the information actually was (which, in fairness, Chief Ombudsman Adam Sampson had previously flagged up to me was likely to be the case). What conclusion can anyone draw about the many law firms on the list about which one complaint had reached an ombudsman decision but then no remedy ordered, meaning they had in fact dealt with the matter properly?

A common trope on this website and elsewhere is that alternative business structures and all the other changes in the legal market will hit the traditional high street law firm hard. In saying this, there is an implication that a reduction in the number of solicitors on high streets is a bad thing. This is a shaky assumption – if everything was shipshape, I don’t suppose so many non-lawyers would be eying up the market. For one thing, quantity does not equal quality – better one efficient, accessible law firm down the road than three inefficient, inaccessible practices.