News of a potential split at the Law Society of Scotland, with 165 members from Glasgow writing to newspapers to call for an end to its representative role, may well cause some shudders at its counterpart south of the border.

It’s always a dilemma as to when to go into print with rumour that nobody will confirm on the record but this is too important not to, especially as I’ve been asking around on it and so am not just relying on one source. But I should stress that it remains a rumour.

“Better the devil you know” is the phrase I keep hearing on the subject of whether the Law Society council will approve the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s application to become an alternative business structure licensing authority.

My recent blog on whether the Bar Standards Board (BSB) sometimes seems to take too pro-barrister a position for a public interest regulator certainly provoked a response from various people. One barrister saw the fact that the BSB and Bar Council share office space as further evidence of a lack of independence, while it also brought out barristers who simply dislike the BSB generally.

Today’s research into public attitudes towards complaints publication, commissioned jointly by the Legal Ombudsman and Legal Services Consumer Panel, makes for interesting reading. Not so much because of their support for publication, which was not a huge shock, but for some of the other findings that came out of the focus groups.