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‘Christmas tree’ bills
Michael Cross
Tuesday, 21 May 2013

According to the official summary (slightly paraphrased) the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act exists to make provision about the Green Investment Bank; employment law; to establish the Competition and Markets Authority and to abolish the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading; to amend the Competition Act 1998 and the Enterprise Act 2002; to make provision for the reduction of legislative burdens; to make provision about copyright and rights in performances; likewise about payments to company directors; and for connected purposes.

I know this because I looked up the act to check one ‘connected purpose’ relevant to my industry, the bit specifying that Royal Charters made after 1 March 2013 can be amended only by a two-thirds majority in parliament. It didn’t even make the summary.

Neither did the measure creating a power to require banks and utilities to allow customers to see what data is held on them. Despite my long-standing interest in access to data, that aspect of the bill had passed me by until I heard about it by chance at a thinktank event last week.

Readers will recognise the problem created by ‘Christmas tree’ bills – large multi-topic bills, upon which a department hangs areas of policy like baubles on a Christmas tree. In opposition, the Conservative party used to protest against such legislative tactics, but of course in government everything changes.

A report by the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee this week found that the size of acts of parliament has been growing consistently since the 1980s - from an average of 37 pages during the 1980s to 85 in the past decade. In the 1950s the average was just 16.

More pages isn’t necessarily bad – the report points out that some of the increase can be accounted for by welcome improvements in readability. But the scale and range of topics covered by legislation like the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, the Localism Act, and our old favourite the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, surely militates against quality.

Especially given the parliamentary timetable. The committee concludes that ‘the majority of poor-quality legislation results from either inadequate policy preparation or insufficient time being allowed for the drafting process, or a combination of the two’.

It recommends that a week should elapse between the conclusion of bill committee evidence sessions and the start of line-by-line scrutiny, to allow MPs enough time to consider the evidence and for amendments to be drafted and selected for debate. No doubt the government will accept this recommendation – until the next time a minister wants to get a pet obsession in to legislation.

However the report also commends the ‘Good Law’ initiative set up last month by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, a wide-ranging effort by a bunch of web-savvy individuals working with the Cabinet Office to find ways of reversing the tide of complexity in legislation.

The initiative says it wants to generate a wider debate. I hope solicitors find the time to join in – if only to disprove the canard that lawyers believe the more complex the legislation, the better.

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AXA says what we all think on referral fees
John Hyde
Friday, 17 May 2013

I come from a depressing, end-of-the-line town called Clacton-on-Sea. You probably stayed there in a caravan once, but had the fortune to leave after a long rainy weekend. Not me, I was stuck there, with just candyfloss and those two-penny machines to see me through to 18.

Now, I’m allowed to say what I like about Clacton. But if any outsider ever dares do the same, they’ll have me to deal with. (Not much admittedly, but it sounds threatening.) Which brings me (and stick with me on this one) to referral fees.

This week poor David Fisher’s ears must have been red hot, for he has been the talk of the legal world. The AXA manager spoke only for a few minutes at a parochial Commons meeting on insurance, but his words lit the blue touch paper.

Fisher alleged that some personal injury firms are still paying referral fees for work and ignoring the SRA-policed ban.

There have been two markedly different responses. The first lot, from comments below the story, was full of fury towards Fisher – how could he possibly know? Where’s his evidence? Mind your own bloody business! My Twitter timeline told a different story – most solicitors reacted with a weary indifference. A collective ‘well duh’, if you will. Of course there are some still paying for cases – how naïve would you have to be to believe otherwise?

Is this the ‘Clacton syndrome’ at work? Do solicitors resent being told home truths if they come from an insurer on the outside? I have no evidence whatsoever that any firms are paying referral fees – why would there be any? There aren’t many unlawful activities that are carried out in the full glare of publicity. But will some be ignoring SRA rules? You’d have to guess so.

After all, plenty paid referral fees before they were legalised in 2004, and that was before the PI sector had grown so accustomed to using them as a crutch.

These are desperate times, and some will turn to desperate measures. If the penalty from the SRA is being struck off, what does it matter if your business is likely to fail anyway? The SRA has approached the business of policing the ban with all the enthusiasm of a teenager flipping burgers for minimum wage. Once there’s an inkling you’ll get away with it, some will take the chance.

The truth is there are plenty of firms paying into collective marketing schemes or joint advertising pools or group work-grabbing initiatives, or whatever euphemism you want to use. They’re all lawful but they’re propping up the same system as pre-ban. Ditto with the insurer-claimant joint ventures, in which all the profits that came from the referral fee conveyor belt are retained but behind a cloak of respectability.

Too often the claimant lobby has suffered from wilful blindness to the rogue elements in its midst. Too often it has defended the indefensible, leaving the government the easy job of lumping everyone in together and creating LASPO. If Fisher was talking rubbish, let him. But if there was any element of truth to his claims, it’s up to everyone in the industry to be honest and admit it.

I may deny Clacton is a sinkhole ‘til I’m blue in the face, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

John Hyde is a Gazette reporter

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Airports: four decades of cancellations is enough
Michael Cross
Thursday, 16 May 2013

Last year I made two longish-haul journeys for the Gazette to fast-growing economies of interest to UK law firms. Neither of my destinations – Bogota and Erbil – had a direct flight from London. The trips involved spending time (and money) in Amsterdam, Madrid and Vienna.

Even more graphically than Heathrow’s barely contained chaos at peak time, the lack of direct connections to important emerging markets brought home Britain’s chronic failure to get to grips with air transport policy.

Incredibly, governments have dithered over airport expansion since 1974, when Harold Wilson’s incoming administration cancelled the planned 24-hour airport on the Essex coast at Maplin. That’s nearly four decades. The tradition continued through the last election, when none of the major parties dared support a third runway at Heathrow – itself only a feeble last-minute lash-up response to a capacity crisis.

For those new to the debate, or who think this is a south-east-centric whinge, I’m not talking about a few business-class executives having to change planes but a threat to the national economy.

Heathrow – currently being operated at an intensity unique in the world – is the UK’s only hub airport. Hub airports don’t generate much direct wealth, but by attracting transfer passengers they make viable direct routes to destinations that might not be viable on their own. This is especially important when connecting with emerging markets.

Current destinations from London that would be threatened by a decline in feed-in passengers include Mexico City, Beirut, Seattle, Chennai, Riyadh, Ottawa and Dhaka. Direct routes are also good for business for direct investment. A company in, say, Wuhan planning to open a European office is much more likely to pick a location linked by a direct flight than in an outlying city.

In a hard-hitting report this month the House of Commons Transport Committee points out: ‘The UK’s hub airport is of great importance to all the regions of the UK. It plays a unique role in connecting the country to the rest of the world – a role that could not be adequately fulfilled by a non-hub airport. It is imperative that the UK maintains its status as an international aviation hub.’

So, how to go about it? My heart pulls me to the London mayor’s ‘Boris Island’ scheme for a new Thames estuary airport, but my head tells me it is too expensive and in the wrong place. Point-to-point services east of London would be better served by better use of spare capacity at Stansted and the excellent runway at Manston in north-east Kent.

The transport committee comes out in favour of a bold but practical compromise. The idea, floated last year by Policy Exchange thinktank, is to build four new runways, in parallel pairs, to the west of Heathrow’s current site. This would use all existing terminals except Terminal 4, as well as Heathrow’s belatedly installed rail links. Steeper approaches and new airliner technology would mean less noise impact than today, though the inhabitants of Windsor Castle might suffer.

It looks an excellent plan; let’s get on with it. Now.

No doubt someone will comment that public money would be better spent on preserving legal aid than building new airports. Fair enough, but both represent only tiny slices of public expenditure. And – to channel the late Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 homily on the good Samaritan – where do we think tax revenues to pay for a decent legal aid service will come from if the UK’s economy is not open to the world?

Michael Cross is Gazette news editor

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Bringing back the death penalty
Paul Rogerson
Tuesday, 14 May 2013

I expect the acutely distressing case of Tia Sharp to spark fresh debate about reintroducing the death penalty, and not only because her father has called for the murderer to be hanged. It can’t happen, you may say - not least because so many appalling miscarriages of justice have been exposed in the decades since capital punishment was abolished. The posthumous pardon of Derek Bentley is perhaps the most potent weapon in the armoury of its detractors.

Parliament hasn’t voted on the death penalty since the 1990s. But is the political wind changing?

An opinion poll today underlines the spectacular inroads made by UKIP into the support of the mainstream parties, and the prime minister’s seemingly vain concession to his eurosceptic rebels is making for a febrile atmosphere at Westminster. (This is relevant, bear with me.)

Few expect UKIP ever to form a government its own right, but even fewer would deny it is changing the political climate. And though it is not official party policy, many UKIP members support the return of capital punishment. A UKIP spokesman told me: ‘We think it’s a question that should be allowed to be raised, but we have no corporate position. It is free-vote territory. You couldn’t impose the whip in [a Commons vote on capital punishment].’

Chief among these supporters is UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall, UKIP MEP for the north-west of England. He wants the death penalty introduced for child murderers, serial killers and those who murder police officers. Nuttall stresses that it is UKIP’s policy to hold a referendum on controversial issues which gain the support of 5% of the population.

In 2011, Nuttall signed a petition on the Downing Street website launched by political blogger Guido Fawkes which had the aim of attracting the necessary 100,000 signatures to trigger a debate. As he pointed out at the time, a YouGov poll found that 62% of people would support the death penalty for child murder and 65% for serial murder.

That a majority of the electorate support the death penalty for the most heinous crimes appears indisputable. Opponents of capital punishment were relieved when the petition closed with just 26,000 signatures – a counter-petition got 33,000.

Of course, it could never happen anyway while we remain ‘in Europe’. This is the only region in the world where the death penalty is no longer applied. All the Council of Europe's 47 member states have either abolished capital punishment or instituted a moratorium on executions. This determination to eradicate the death penalty was reflected in Protocol 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Moreover, as the Foreign Office stresses in the present government’s global Strategy for Abolition of the Death Penalty 2010- 2015: ‘It is the longstanding policy of the UK to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle’.

This is what the prime minister has to say. He told Dylan Jones, the author of Cameron on Cameron: ‘[If] someone murdered one of my children then emotionally, obviously I would want to kill them. How could you not? But there have been too many cases of things going wrong, of the wrong people being executed, of evidence coming to light after the execution, and sometimes there is just too much of an element of doubt. And I just don't honestly think that in a civilised society like ours that you can have the death penalty any more.’

I agree with the PM. But what if Britain does hold a referendum on EU membership and pulls out? Could one foresee a future government of the right bringing this back to the Commons? Not all Conservative MPs share Mr Cameron’s misgivings; not all Labour politicians do, either.

Enough crystal ball-gazing at this point, since I would not claim to be any better at it than the psephologists who were mugged by Mr Farage and co at the local elections. But I would suggest that the return of capital punishment has gone from being impossible, to being highly unlikely. A small shift perhaps, but a perceptible shift nevertheless.

Paul Rogerson is Gazette editor-in-chief

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Judicial tension over costs budgeting
Rachel Rothwell
Monday, 13 May 2013

The final report on the costs budgeting pilot, which was published last week, gives an interesting insight into a battle going on within the judiciary. As is known, the Commercial Court managed to win itself an exemption from costs budgeting some time ago by convincing Lord Justice Jackson that, in the high-value commercial cases dealt with in the CC, such measures were unnecessary. Jackson accepted this in his 2009 reform proposals. At the Bar Council’s annual conference last year, the CC’s Mrs Justice Gloster described this in terms of having ‘won the battle’ on costs budgeting.

Then in February this year, shortly before costs budgeting came in across the board on 1 April, another carve-out was granted, for those courts dealing with similar high-value claims to the CC, which feared ‘forum shopping’ problems if they were subject to costs budgeting while the CC was not. So cases worth more than £2m in the Chancery Division, Technology and Construction, and the Mercantile Courts were also exempted.

This exemption will be reviewed in July, however, and is by no means certain to stay in place. As reported in last month’s Litigation Funding, Mr Justice Ramsay – the judge in charge of implementing Jackson – recently said that his own view was that such exemptions should not exist.

Now, the final report on a costs management pilot which has been running in the TCC and Mercantile Court since October 2011, co-authored by a monitoring group of three lawyers (Nicholas Gould, Christina Lockwood and Claire King), sheds some light on what other judges think of the exemptions from costs budgeting; and it seems the judiciary is not too impressed.

Telephone interviews with judges conducted for the report showed that ‘many judges shared the feeling that there is no principle for the exemption of the Commercial Court, and they find this very unsatisfactory’.

One specialist mercantile judge interviewed said he firmly believed that costs management should be ‘across the board’, adding that ‘no rationale’ had been given for the CC’s exemption, and describing the further exemptions announced in February as ‘illogical’. The report continues: ‘The cynical view is that there are so many foreign litigants in the Commercial Court (Berezovsky v Abramovich etc.), that the decision had been made to allow [litigators] to continue earning very high fees in the Commercial Court. Consequently big firms might choose to start proceedings in the Commercial Court for a “free for all”, instead of using courts of choice such as the Mercantile Courts in Bristol or Birmingham.

‘Why should a mercantile judge be forced to tell Barclays Bank and HSBC that they cannot spend more than X on their expensive City firm of solicitors, when the Commercial Court is free from this obligation? Judges clearly resent that no guidance was given on this.’

Clearly the senior judiciary now finds itself under pressure from those in the lower ranks to remove the costs budgeting exemptions. But if you believe the ‘cynical’ view outlined above, that could have a negative impact on the profitability of City firms.

In his reform proposals, Jackson said that the large commercial businesses that litigate in the Commercial Court had informed him that they were ‘unconcerned’ about the level of legal costs. But it could be that attitudes on this differ according to whether a company is bringing a claim, or forced to defend one. It seems to me that, before any final decision is made on the exemptions, there must be some proper investigation into whether the clients in these high-value cases actually want their legal costs to be subject to the rigours of costs budgeting, or not.

Only when that is known can a decision be made.

Rachel Rothwell is editor of Litigation Funding magazine, providing in-depth coverage on costs and the financing of litigation.

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Facebook and flexible friends
Jonathan Rayner
Friday, 10 May 2013

It’s been a time of contrast for the fortunes of women in the workforce.

On the one hand, we had Nicola Mendelsohn. Who she? She’s the business high-flyer who is the antithesis of presenteeism. She’s flexible working personified. She is, to put it alliteratively, the three-day weekend woman every week of the working year.

And she’s in the news because she has just been appointed Facebook’s vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa despite, for the past 15 years, insisting upon working just a four-day week so she could see more of her husband and four children.

That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? If she can do it, why can’t women lawyers insist on four-day weeks, too? It would have all sorts of knock-on benefits for law firms, not least improving the retention of talent and countering the drop-off in the number of women lawyers at senior level – when many women opt to leave the profession and put family before career.

It would also make the law a more diverse and fairer profession, with women at the helm of firms and earning the same big bucks as men.

Except, as we have heard over the last few weeks, it ain’t working out like that at all. My colleague John Hyde reported that the proportion of women making partner in Magic Circle firms in 2013 was around 5% down on the previous year. The quintet of firms appointed just 13 women out of 73 promotions to partnership, compared with 24 out of 95 new partners the year before.

He also reported that research published by campaign group the 30% club, which aims to see 30% female representation at partner level by 2020, shows that men are 10 times more likely than women to progress from trainee level to partner at major law firms.

Slater & Gordon employment partner Claire Dawson said that even at law firm partner level there are often disparities in pay between men and women. She said: ‘Law firms’ pay structures are rarely transparent. Are men paid more because they are more prepared to negotiate than women? Are women unwilling to risk rocking the boat by pointing out that male colleagues earn more than they do?’

It’s not only women lawyers who suffer this apparent discrimination. the Independent reported earlier this month that women in financial services earn 20% less than men, with around £14,800 difference in their average base salary.

Samantha Mangwana, who is also an employment partner at Slater & Gordon, wrote to The Independent to point out that an Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry in 2010 found that women’s bonuses in the financial services industry were up to 60% lower than those of men in comparable jobs. Mangwana wrote that taking the size of bonuses into account: ‘The pay disparity is often a six- or even seven-figure sum.’

I’m sorry to disappoint, but getting a job in online media - like Nicola Mendelsohn - isn’t always the solution to getting the flexible hours that a family demands. Merissa Meyer, the boss of Yahoo!, ordered all staff who work away from the office to commute into work - or quit. Apparently she was concerned that staff that worked from home were unproductive compared with colleagues beavering away in a busy office.

The antithesis of presenteeism she is not.

Jonathan Rayner is a reporter at the Gazette

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Britain’s fragile legal legacy
Eduardo Reyes
Friday, 10 May 2013

The Queen’s decision to cut back on long-haul flights has avoided the need to address the rights and wrongs of her presence at the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka, where the rule of law is cause for concern.

As has been widely reported, the removal and impeachment of their chief justice is the most recent development.

Shirani Bandaranayake had infuriated the government by declaring unconstitutional a bill that would have centralised political power, in particular at the expense of the, largely Tamil, northern province, and given the minister for economic development wide-ranging powers to infringe upon civil liberties.

But there is a question that neither the advancing years of our monarch nor neat pieces of protocol can get rid of. That is whether Britain’s global common law legacy is less durable than we like to think.

Together with the familiar-looking green benches of parliaments in various former British colonies, lookalike court systems – including gowns, wigs, gavels and weighty legal tomes – symbolise a good and benign side of the post-colonial legacy.

It isn’t just that these institutions saved face for Britain as its thinly staffed empire unraveled – although they certainly did that. A generation of proud lawyers grew up in, valued, and were shaped by these legacy legal systems. Many are members of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association.

But how often can lawyers and the courts take an effective stand against major assaults on the rule of law? The truly depressing answer is roughly once.

That’s not to say brave lawyers in-country, and supportive peers abroad, don’t carry on trying after such a singular assault. But once seems to be the pattern.

In Zimbabwe, chief justice Anthony Gubbay ruled illegal the fast-track land seizures that presaged the country’s descent into economic and democratic crisis – and was replaced by a more pliant jurist.

In Fiji in 2009 the court of appeal ruled the government of Frank Bainimarama, which had seized power in a coup, should be removed – a brave stand, and the judiciary’s last, as all judges were dismissed soon after.

And in Sri Lanka Bandaranayake got to make the stand just once – her distinguished career apparently causing a heavy-handed government no blushes as it ended her tenure.

Brave jurists in each case did not take pointless actions – they drew our attention to brutality and unfairness in ways that were loud and unmistakable. In such cases, it’s then up to the rest of the world to act – or not.

But the depressing truth, as these jurists knew, is that such judgments are bee stings – they can use them just once – and these three country’s courts now have the trappings, but not the standards, of jurisdictions where the rule of law applies.

In far too many countries, the law is a legacy whose institutions and benefits are fading.

Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor

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‘Going to court was worse than the abuse’
Catherine Baksi
Tuesday, 7 May 2013

‘You can’t be certain that you think that it wasn’t possible that you filled in the first side of the form?’

If you struggled for a moment with that question, imagine how it must have felt for a defendant with learning difficulties who was asked it by an advocate in open court.

Lawyer and academic Joyce Plotnikoff listed this example at an event to launch the Advocate’s Gateway – guidelines and toolkits created to help advocates ensure their questioning is suitable for vulnerable witnesses and defendants.

Here are two more:

‘Who would you say wears the trousers in your house?’ Asked of a witness with autism spectrum disorder, who interprets language literally.

‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ Asked of a six-year-old witness. (The lawyer complained they weren’t allowed to ask the ‘simplest question’.)

Speaking at the launch, the attorney general Dominic Grieve QC cited Judicial College guidance underpinning the importance of clear and appropriate communication.

The guidance says: ‘Effective communication is the bedrock of the legal process: [unless] all parties understand… the meaning of questions asked and answers given during the course of the proceedings… the process of law is at best seriously impeded. At worst, justice may be denied.’

As Grieve pointed out, the sexual offending against children by Jimmy Savile has focused attention on the way the criminal justice system treats young and vulnerable complainants.

Much has changed from the days when children were not deemed to be reliable witnesses.

The Advocate’s Gateway, a collaboration across the legal professions, judiciary, charities and government, demonstrates the progress that has been made.

At a time when criminal lawyers face changes that threaten their continued existence, this initiative is a fine example of the legal profession getting on with the job and doing what it does best – ensuring justice is done and that all who find themselves before the courts are treated fairly.

Along with 11 current toolkits that cover young witnesses and those with particular difficulties, more are planned to deal with mental illness, deafness, voice disorders, communication aids and the use of remote live links.

The harrowing remark of a young abuse victim, cited by Grieve - ‘going to court was worse than the abuse’ - demonstrates the challenge of the justice system, but the gateway is certainly a huge step in the right direction.

Catherine Baksi is a reporter on the Gazette

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UKIP’s law and justice policy
Paul Rogerson
Friday, 3 May 2013

What is most notable about UKIP’s 2013 local ‘manifesto’ is not its brevity, but its banality. We know about the dog-whistle scapegoating of ‘immigrants’ and ‘travellers’. What else is there?

UKIP believes council tax should go down, tax generally should be ‘as low as possible’ (zero, 10%, 20%, what?), and that ‘real decision-making should be given to local communities’. Money should be spent on local services, the greenbelt must be protected, and there must always be honey still for tea.

I made that last one up, but the document does stray close to caricature: Britain needs ‘commonsense policies’, it roars at frequent intervals. Who knew? The echo of Jim Hacker - ‘sensible policies for a better Britain’ - is unmistakable.

I don’t apologise for sniping, nor do I consider it inappropriate in a professional journal. If a party wins a quarter of the vote it deserves to be scrutinised. Thus my visit to UKIP’s website.

So what is the party’s policy on justice and the rule of law? I’d love to tell you but it doesn’t seem to have one. UKIP wants to ‘crack down on crime and anti-social behaviour’ which, fair enough, the ConDems and Labour routinely go out of their way to encourage. But how? The party wants more ‘police on the streets’, and those left behind at the station to be liberated from ‘form-filling’. Which forms, exactly? Has anyone told Nigel Farage that crime is falling rapidly and the perceived deterrence value of ‘bobbies on the beat’ is a hoary urban myth?

And that’s about it. Planning lawyers might be enlightened by the party’s pledge to ensure ‘local people’s opinions should be respected and not overruled’, but I doubt it. One core pledge surpasses all the others by not being exactly threadbare, but actually having no thread at all. UKIP wants to ‘build partnerships to reduce costs’. Who with? Andalusian tin-miners?

If you haven’t seen Being There, the 1979 film in which the genius Peter Sellers plays an idiot savant whose simple brand of wisdom resonates with a jaded public, I urge you to do so. How prophetic it was.

‘As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden,’ says Chauncey Gardener. Quite so. I predict that the attack dogs of the national press will go to town on Mr Farage and his crew between now and 2015. As well they might.

Paul Rogerson is Gazette editor-in-chief

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Our only certainty is uncertainty
John Hyde
Friday, 3 May 2013

Sado-masochism, that's the only possible answer.

How else do you explain why so many solicitors line up for conferences about the future of the legal profession, like lobsters clambering to the front of the tank for a better view of the cooking instructions? I speak as someone with considerable experience of these things - in fact I reckon I've totted up so many CPD points attending conferences and seminars I'm now a solicitor by default.

The formula is the same each time. A speaker with the title of professor will tell everyone they're doomed. Then an investment banker will tell them how long the agony will last.

There's a quick break for coffee, at which everyone scavenges for free pens, before shuffling back in to be told how terrible they are at running a business. If they're really unlucky the poor schmucks will then be told by a 'consumer champion' that the public hates them because a survey of six people and an Oompa Loompa told them so.

That's not to say the speakers aren't talking sense. Public perception of lawyers (not the perception of actual clients, you'll notice) is pretty low, largely because their only experience of lawyers is 'briefs' ham-acting on EastEnders.

And of course, those investors and academics are right. The market will contract and banks are lending to law firms with all the trepidation of Nigel Farage in a Bucharest bar.

Private equity investors tell me law firms are queuing round the block for capital like impoverished families at a food bank. Interestingly, the 'consolidation in the market' predictions are nothing new. I heard the same thing at these conferences two years ago (often from the same people) and yet still law firm numbers hold relatively stable.

But we shouldn't be naive enough to think this will last, and I've been told by more than one analyst of hundreds of 'zombie' firms where managing partners are running their businesses into the ground before taking retirement.

What would stick in my throat if I ran a firm is the idea that I'm largely responsible for my plight. For a start, solicitors are routinely criticised for being bad at business. That may be so, but what do you expect from people trained as lawyers? I'd wager most doctors, journalists and other professionals wouldn't know their way around a budget sheet either.

And how can you run a business when there is no certainty? When constant government reforms to your sector mean the goalposts are not so much moved as extended across the pitch with the biggest brands in the country lining up to take a shot?

There was a wonderful irony at the Modern Law conference this week. One investor said law firms were unattractive prospects because they had no certainty over their future. Just hours earlier the justice minister Helen Grant announced that a decision that could make or break firms was being delayed. How can you have any certainty when the government appears uncertain itself?

It feels like the government is meddling - hesitantly - while Rome burns. Only law firms then get the blame when they struggle for breath.

John Hyde is a Gazette reporter

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