There is said to be a small village where the only industry is one in which dwellers take in each other’s washing. The more I think about it the more likely that will happen to the solicitors’ profession. Not that we will take in each other’s laundry. No, nothing as sophisticated as that.

I think we will all end up being consultants, running courses and writing books on how to be lawyers. You can see it happening now. We are bombarded daily with different audits, competencies, and demands we have to satisfy. This has led to a growth of consultants to test us, authors of manuals on how to pass the test, and trainers.

Good luck to them I suppose but does anyone realise how hard pressed we are simply to comply with the demands that some agencies make on us? At least in my firm we have enough people to make policies worthwhile - someone writes a policy and another reads it. For sole practitioners it must be mind-boggling writing detailed policies for the same person to read.

At the moment we have been deciding whether to seek Lexcel accreditation or the Specialist Quality Mark. Gladly, we as a profession have a choice, which is obviously a good thing. They are both perfectly reasonable standards to aspire to and anything that makes us solicitors look better is clearly marvellous – but the amount of work involved is high. No doubt the standards will change on a yearly basis and someone will have keep up to speed.

What I will do is write a book called How to Make a Fortune on the High Street. You can have it - price £500.

David Pickup is a partner at Aylesbury-based Pickup & Scott