Just when the legal profession is staggering under the weight of so much change, another radical review approaches.

In the EU, lawyers have long benefited from a special regime of laws dedicated just to us: the lawyers’ directives.

No other liberal profession has its own sectoral legislation in this way - the other professions are mostly subsumed under horizontal laws (I will try to keep the EU lingo to a minimum).

The lawyers’ directives are twofold.

First, there is the Lawyers Services Directive (77/249/EEC), which permits temporary cross-border services within the EU in a most liberal fashion - for instance, no prior notification of the bar in the host country is required.

And second there is the Lawyers Establishment Directive (98/5/EC), which permits permanent establishment in an even more liberal fashion - for instance, you can practise host law even if you do not have a host title, and you can then go on and acquire the host title without examination after three years of practising host law.

The European Commission was under an obligation (Article 15) to review the 1998 Establishment Directive after 10 years. It delayed by a further four years because of the accession of so many new member states in 2004 and 2008.

The review process has now begun. It has some interesting aspects.

First, the review is not just into the Establishment Directive, which is required by law, but also into the impact of all free movement legislation on the legal profession. For instance, the CCBE has recently sent a questionnaire, prepared by the Commission, to our members with questions about how the free movement legislation I have mentioned - including but not restricted to the two directives - is working at a national level.

The second interesting aspect is that the Commission is now funding an external study into the EU legal profession. The tender document has just been published, and poses some probing questions which the successful candidate must answer in the final report.

Here are some of the questions: '1. Assess the extent to which a separate legal framework specific to lawyers is still necessary, following the adoption of Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications, i.e. provide quantitative and qualitative indicators of the added value of the "Lawyers' Directives".'

That means that there is a chance that the lawyers’ special regime is not secure.

The Commission’s policy has changed since the last of our directives, to favour horizontal directives over sectoral ones, for the obvious reason that it takes fewer resources to deal with many together rather than singly one-by-one. Will this report see the end of the lawyers’ special regime?

'2. Examine whether the scope of application of the two directives with respect to the professional titles listed in Article 2.1 of each of the two Directives is sufficient or whether the scope of the directives should be extended to broader categories of legal professionals.' This is new.

Does the Commission feel that it should be extended to notaries given the recent court case which propelled them into the single market? To other legal professions which exist in many member states, such as legal executives in the UK? The report will have to deal with such questions.

'3. Examine whether the safeguards concerning joint practice provided for in Article 11(5) of Directive 98/5/EC are still appropriate, in the light of increasing interest in alternative business structures and multi-disciplinary practice within the legal profession?'

This is one of several references to the Legal Services Act 2007, about which the Commission is clearly aware, and whose ramifications it wants to see considered in the report. In fact, the tender requires the successful candidate to find out about other national changes in other member states, and take them into account as well.

At present, Article 11 (5) of the 1998 Establishment Directive permits member states to refuse members of ABSs to practise in their jurisdiction.

Other tasks to be carried out in the report include the compilation of 'an inventory of barriers or challenges commonly experienced by lawyers who wish to provide services in another EU member state', both for the Services and the Establishment Directives.

Legal form or capital structure, and conflict between home and host state rules, are listed as potential obstacles, among others.

If you want to submit an application to run the report - provided there is no conflict of interest - you have until 15 September to do so.

Then you will have up to €500,000 and eleven months to write an account that could shape the future of the European legal profession.