The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘accreditation’ thus: ‘Give authority or sanction to someone or something when recognised standards have been met.’

Which is precisely what happens when someone qualifies to be a practising solicitor, a point not lost on those who are ambivalent about the development of specialist quality marks in the legal sector.

But solicitors must be realistic about the profession’s evolution.

Last week the Law Society gave the green light for the SRA to regulate alternative business structures, and in a few months the first ABSs will be out there in the newly liberalised marketplace competing for your work.

How are you going to ensure your firm wins business amid a predicted influx of new and brand-savvy competitors?

As Law Society president Linda Lee says: ‘The solicitor brand is incredibly strong, but consumers are becoming more demanding and focusing on differentiation and specialism.’

What accreditation schemes do is provide solicitors with another means of differentiating themselves from competing providers to further leverage the acknowledged power of the Law Society brand.

And in a market likely to be penetrated by retail providers which already have resonant consumer identities, that has to be valuable.

Specialisation gathers momentum when professions expand, of course.

Our second education and training feature this week contains the arresting statistic that there are five times as many practising solicitors as there were 50 years ago. Is the profession now ‘full’?

The answer to that question, you may be surprised to learn, is probably not.