Governance seems to be the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s new favourite word. It crops up in the most fashionable parts of the SRA Handbook – in her latest blog on COLPs and COFAs, Allison Wooddisse, head of Legal Futures Associate LexisPSL Practice Compliance, tries to work out what the SRA means when it talks about law firms’ governance.

Many of the lawyers who have only just woken up to the prospect of non-lawyer ownership of firms (a sizeable group, I’d wager) generally react with horror. The argument I hear all the time – exemplified by the letter signed by nine general counsel in the US – is that it will dilute the professionalism of lawyers, damage the lawyer-client relationship and lead to dastardly non-lawyers strong-arming lawyers to put profit before ethics.

If we are to judge the success of a regulator by the degree to which it really annoys those it regulates, then the Legal Services Board (LSB) has done an absolutely bang-up job these past three years. It is just over 12 months since I first blogged about whispers questioning the long-term need for the LSB once independent regulation, the Legal Ombudsman and alternative business structures were all up and running. Well, they are whispers no more.

So at last we got to see what private equity investment, Saatchi & Saatchi and a £15m advertising budget has bought QualitySolicitors – a TV advert for legal services the like of which I certainly haven’t seen before, a world away from the “Had an accident in the last three years?” genre.

There have now been well over 100 alternative business structure applications since 3 January 2012 and we should see the first approvals imminently. So, what does this mean for the estimated 75% of practices which are just sitting and watching and hoping this will all go away? Should they be preparing to join the law firm beauty parade that will decide which law firms are purchased, sold and merged? Or are they right to wait on the side lines, biding their time?