In many ways this week’s launch of online conveyancing service In-deed gives us pointers to the way in which the legal market may develop. The brainchild of non-lawyers, albeit non-lawyers well versed in the conveyancing market, it is slick, jargon-free and professionally marketed. Lawyers will get sick of hearing this word very soon, but it is about creating a brand.

I have written before about the Legal Services Board’s approach to transparency – it demands much of those it regulates but getting information from the board is not quite so easy.

Michelle Garlick, a partner in the professional risk team at Legal Futures Associate Weightmans, considers the changes the SRA is planning to make to the professional indemnity insurance regime and is not surprised that it is not happening as quickly as insurers wanted. But in the meantime they will be reviewing their risk assessments and underwriting criteria very carefully.

In the end, the Bar Standards Board probably didn’t have much of a choice but to become a regulator of advocacy focused alternative business structures. Without it, barristers and chambers that wanted to practise in new ways would have been forced to go off and find a new regulator – most likely the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Dealing successfully with succession is proving a difficult challenge for many traditional legal practices. The average age of (predominantly male) equity partners is now 59, yet most have failed to plan for their exit and succession. As a result, many firms now face an uncertain future with little or no value being placed on the sale prices of their practices and no younger partners prepared to invest in equity to enable partners’ retirement.