No one present at the Criminal Law Solicitors Association conference last week could have been left in any doubt about the profession’s almost-universal opposition to price-competitive tendering for the commissioning of police station legal aid work.The Legal Services Commission is currently consulting on the scheme – best value tendering (BVT) – that will see firms bid against each other for work in contract areas.

Practitioners are concerned by the speed of the rollout, with minimal scope for assessment of pilots in Greater Manchester, and Avon and Somerset, as well as the impact of the change.

Many firms that are unsuccessful in the bidding process are likely to go bust. And practitioners fear that, in their desperation to remain in the market, others may make unsustainably low bids that will diminish the quality of service.

Wigan solicitor Andrew Keogh predicts that, once BVT has been rolled out nationally, there might be only 336 firms left in the market with police station contracts.

So what can the profession do in the face of such a threat? Competition laws prohibit solicitors from taking any concerted action that might affect the market.

But one can’t help recalling what happened when a large number of criminal barristers independently came to the same decision not to take part in the very high cost criminal case (VHCC) scheme. Only 130 of the 2,300 barristers who were offered VHCC contracts by the LSC signed up, forcing it to return to the drawing board and increase fees as an interim measure.

The bar is obviously a smaller profession. And one wonders whether solicitors, who are in competition, could trust one another to reach the same conclusion. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.