The conventional wisdom is that this is not a good time to be in a small high street firm, made substantially worse by the recent goings-on in legal aid and firms not receiving contracts. Here’s a controversial and brutal thought for you: so what?

Why is it that, given the fact that many of the consultations issued by the profession’s regulators lead to changes to the way in which professionals are regulated and are able to conduct their businesses, and that most professionals regularly complain about the way they are regulated, more do not respond?

Having recently taken a look at who is running the Legal Services Board, this week it is the turn of the board of the Office for Legal Complaints, which will oversee the Legal Ombudsman service. You will see there is at least two law firms in the land that will have no excuses if they fall foul of the new complaints regime because they have direct links with members of the board.

When I published my story the week before last on the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) demand that four of the professional bodies introduce lay majorities on their regulatory boards sooner than they planned, I said I would add their responses when received. Those who have been breathlessly awaiting these pearls of their regulators’ wisdom will have been disappointed.

Just who are the members of the Legal Services Board? They have stayed in the shadows, as chairman David Edmonds and chief executive Chris Kenny are the public faces of what they do. We don’t even know much of what they do in their meetings, because the minutes are not easily accessible on their website and Mr Edmonds is always implacable whenever I suggest that it would be good if their meetings were open – or at least part of them, in the same way that the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board split their meetings between public and private sessions.