The growth in access points for “legal services” is gaining unprecedented momentum. So what does this mean for the future? Could it spell the end of the road for some of the charity shops that have come to dominate many of our struggling high streets and shopping precincts? Will we see new entrants to the market, all offering legal services, taking over the leases for these premises?

A senior figure in the world of legal regulation yesterday described to me the impending effort to ban referral fees as the Dangerous Fees Act, recalling the infamously half-baked and kneejerk Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

To borrow a cliché, how do you solve a problem like Solicitors from Hell (SfH)? The Law Society has chosen to get heavy, co-ordinating a group action on behalf of law firms named on the site in a bid to have it closed down. But the question is whether the Law Society has got its tactics right here. Would it be better off simply ignoring SfH?

Arlene Adams, managing director and co-founder of Peppermint Technology, argues that many law firms wrongly mistake technology with commoditisation and that they need to use IT to follow the example of new entrants to the market, which will not seek to re-create what already exists but instead employ technology to streamline the legal process.

It has been quite a couple of weeks. Far from taking a break for the summer, the imminent arrival of alternative business structures (albeit not quite as imminent as expected) has seen the legal market bubbling over. And we learnt that there are lessons to be found from the Vestal Virgins, no less.