Complaints are a law firm’s best source of market intelligence. I’ve heard this said countless times in recent years, previously by the Legal Complaints Service and its many forebears, and now by the Legal Services Board. “Many lawyers are missing the chance to learn from substantial numbers of consumers who make a complaint,” said LSB chief executive Chris Kenny last week. It may well be true. But hardly any lawyer believes it.

Charles Layfield may well be right to say that Pannone’s Connect2Law network is the best-kept secret in the legal world. Or rather, the secret is that it has proven so remarkably successful in the decade since it was set up, with a fifth of all law firms now in the network. The bigger picture here is law firms helping each other. Now that is something you never used to see very much.

Viv Williams, CEO of Legal Futures Associate 360 Legal Group, says law firms have to decide now how their practices will survive – and in what form – in response to the Legal Services Act and alternative business structures. Law firms’ options are limited; consolidation is inevitable and a strategy for survival could be to grow by acquisition or merger. But there are alternatives.

Reaction to the Legal Services Board’s decision document last week on referral fees has been predictable. The Law Society and Bar Council were deeply unhappy, as was the Association of British Insurers (not an organisation with which Chancery Lane often makes common cause).

One benefit, such as it is, of being a self-confessed legal regulation nerd is that I was invited to attend a Legal Services Board/Legal Services Institute discussion on reserved legal activities the other week. It wasn’t entirely clear whether I was there as a journalist or simply as someone who has shown more interest in the topic than is strictly healthy. The event was part of the early stages of the LSB’s major project to rationalise the scope of regulation.