Metrics, KPIs, benchmarking, six sigma and lean process mapping. It might seem far removed from the day-to-day work of an in-house lawyer – yet these were some of the themes under discussion during a recent meeting of the LexisNexis In-house Advisory Board, explains Will Long of LexisNexis.

While alternative business structures are gaining all the headlines right now, something perhaps even more fundamental is going on this year: the Legal Education and Training Review. Many know it’s happening, but I suspect few quite understand how radically it could reshape the foundation of becoming a lawyer. I don’t think I did until last week, when I attended the first of a series of five seminars being run by the Legal Services Board, this one in association with the Legal Services Institute.

Hands up who feels sorry for the SRA. You at the back? Anyone? Just a smidgen of sympathy? I thought not – that certainly reflects what I hear from solicitors as I go out and about. The possibility of finding practitioners who might have been minded to give their regulator the benefit of the doubt has been extinguished by the practising certificate renewal fiasco. The Law Society has a long history of mucking up IT projects.

I am sure I cannot be the only one who has observed a growing trend amongst solicitors towards giving, or needing to be prepared to give, free advice. It often seems that the pressure to do work for nothing is one which is thrust upon lawyers from outside – mainly by other organisations keen to profit from the lawyer’s desperation/naivety/philanthropy/lack of self worth (delete whichever is inappropriate). There are times when doing something for free is worthwhile. But it is a decision which should be taken for the right reasons.

Raj Tutt of Resolve Consultancy argues that while the decision to ‘name and shame’ lawyers over complaints cannot be changed, there is the opportunity to influence the type of information that is published so that it is fair to firms that genuinely try to deal with unhappy clients.