It’s summertime. But for lawyers, the livin’ ain’t easy (to misquote George Gershwin). Just when it seems that 'one of these mornings, you're going to rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings, and you'll take to the sky' - in other words, go on holiday - word reaches us that there is to be yet another study taking a radical look at the European legal profession. What, another one?

This comes from a different direction. I wrote last week that there will be a study of the lawyers’ directives, as a result of an obligation to review one of them. But now the European commission’s push for a single market is resulting in a new move.

Although the European institutions are normally transparent enough, the existence of this study can only be found by following arcane clues dropped in obscure documents. Well, summer is a period of recreation, and so what better way to spend my time than combing through long incomprehensible communications for messages about important developments?

For those who follow these things obsessively (which I think is only me), I wrote some while ago about the Single Market Act, and its ‘twelve levers to boost growth and strengthen confidence’, which was published on 13 April 2011. Well, in among those curiously-named levers were two of note.

One was ‘Mobility for citizens’ which spoke of the need to ‘review the scope of regulated professions’. The other was on ‘Services’, which said that the commission ‘will carry out further assessments on reserved activities’. These were just two small phrases in a 26-page document, but they lead to big consequences.

The next stage of detective work is to look at the conclusions of the 3,074th Competitiveness Council meeting on 10 March 2011 (yes, there really have been that many, and you have probably never heard of it). The Competitiveness Council brings together departments dealing with the Internal Market, Industry, Research and Space, and the 3,074th meeting was discussing ‘Conclusions on a better functioning Single Market for services - mutual evaluation process of the Services Directive’. In among its riveting conclusions is the following:

'10. RECOGNISES that unjustified or disproportionate requirements reserving access to certain service activities to service providers holding particular qualifications constitute major barriers for the single market especially in cross border situations as demonstrated by the mutual evaluation exercise; WELCOMES the commission’s intention to further assess this issue; and INTENDS to examine appropriate solutions where necessary.'

Well, well, well, it appears that the commission has gone ahead as a result of these scattered references and commissioned a consultancy - a UK-based consultancy, as it happens, called CSES (Centre for Strategy and Evaluation Services), which grew out of Ernst & Young - to conduct a study on reserved activities. The objective of the study is to take stock of the current reserved activities linked to professional qualifications, and to assess their economic impact at national and EU level.

The study includes two main parts: the first will mainly consist of a legal analysis of existing reserved activities linked to professional qualifications, while the second will focus on the economic impact of these reserved activities. And yes, the study will cover lawyers, as well as the business services of, among others, auditors.

The professional rules of lawyers will need to be analysed in 13 member states, including the UK (and also France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands).

Research fatigue, anyone?