When you have been to as many legal conferences as I have over the past 15 years (and boy, have I been to a lot), you get practised at tuning in and out and getting on with other stuff – with the best will in the world, I’ve heard a lot of it before (and often from the same people). So listening to Shirley Woolham of CPP Group at the Epoq/Plexus Law conference on Tuesday was exciting on a couple of levels.

Law students have been here before. When I first started working on the Law Society Gazette in 1996, I went to Trainee Solicitors Group conferences where I would meet legal practice course graduates who had unsuccessfully applied for literally hundreds of training contracts.

With a month to go until the Legal Ombudsman opens for business, I went up to Birmingham last week to see how things are shaping up. So, how are the profession’s millions being spent?

The latest edition of my series looking at who’s who on the various bodies overseeing the legal profession takes us to the Legal Services Consumer Panel, the public face for which is chairwoman Baroness Dianne Hayter of Kentish Town – one of four members of the eight-person panel who are declared Labour supporters in the register of members’ interests that has just been published following a Freedom of Information Act request by Legal Futures.

I have just read LawyerLocator’s white paper entitled “The Future of Small Law Firms”. Some of its findings are, perhaps, rather surprising and somewhat out of kilter with other research and empirical evidence. For example, according to their consumer poll, only 1% of people use search engines to choose a lawyer (75% less than those apparently using a telephone directory!).