Martin Gregory begins a series looking at three of the less well known/utilised on-line applications. In the coming weeks, he will concentrate on Squidoo and Hubpages – tools that can help promote your law firm’s visibility on the World Wide Web, but he starts with Foursquare, which he says is possibly the most intriguing and scaleable social media network to emerge in recent years.

What has struck me from the various conversations I’ve had of late is that though we are still more than a year away from alternative business structures (ABSs), there is already an awful lot going on out there. Those lawyers who think that I and others are exaggerating or scaremongering when we report on threats to the traditional practice of law should meet some of these people. It really is happening.

The latest part of my series looking at who is making the decisions for the legal profession reaches the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The second iteration of the board, the 16 members took over in January this year and the make-up was seen as very City-heavy to compensate for the previous board, which was thought to be too light on City understanding and representation. It has arguably gone too far the other way now.

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.