The government wants to open up the legal market and give consumers more choice by lifting restrictions that prevent solicitors from working in business structures that include non-lawyers.

Sounds familiar? Not when I tell you that the government’s plans were almost derailed last week by high street solicitors. That’s because the government in question is the Scottish government; this has nothing to do with England and Wales.

Except that it does. If Scottish solicitors are not permitted to raise capital and offer the range of services that their competitors south of the border will be able to provide in 18 months’ time, the big Scottish firms will either have to re-register in England or risk being swallowed up by English law businesses – with serious consequences for the Scottish economy.

As you would expect from a country that has preserved its own legal system despite three centuries of union with England and Wales, nothing is ever quite the same in Scotland. There will be no super-regulator equivalent to the Legal Services Board. The Law Society of Scotland will be the only approved regulator unless other professional bodies seek approval direct from the Scottish government.

And the Faculty of Advocates – with fewer than 500 members – wants no part in alternative business structures. This seems acceptable to a nationalist government that cherishes Scotland’s pre-union institutions.

Since there was no ‘regulatory maze’ in Scotland, it’s possible that nothing would have changed if a new framework for England and Wales had not been recommended by Clementi in 2004.

But the consumer group Which? submitted a ‘super-complaint’ about Scottish law firms to the Office of Fair Trading and the Scottish government gave its backing to reforms as long ago as September 2007. Then the Law Society of Scotland came out in favour of permitting alternative business structures two years ago and the policy was approved at its annual general meeting in May 2008.

After a consultation paper early last year, the Scottish government introduced a bill in September 2009. This is now at a crucial stage in the Scottish parliament at Holyrood.

A week before Christmas, concerns were raised about the bill by the Scottish Law Agents Society, the country’s largest voluntary association of solicitors. Older than the Law Society of Scotland, the Law Agents draw more of their 1,500 members from high street solicitors and small firms than from the big commercial practices in Glasgow and Edinburgh. In an internal poll, these members had voted against alternative business structures and even more heavily against external ownership of legal practices.

It was the Law Agents who called a special general meeting of the Law Society of Scotland last Thursday, hoping it would ask the Scottish parliament to reject external ownership of solicitors’ firms. The solicitors met at Murrayfield stadium – I rather hoped on the rugby pitch, though a conference room proved quite sufficient.

But why had the Law Agents left it so late? Michael Sheridan, their secretary, told me that solicitors had not realised until May 2008 that the Law Society had changed direction the previous autumn. Even then, most of them did not grasp what was happening. ‘Traditionally, the real profession ignores its AGMs’, he said.

But the alarm bells began to ring when Scotland suddenly lost its banks. And it was only when the Law Agents saw the wording of the bill that they realised the risks to clients from defaulting investors.

The delay in calling last week’s meeting led to some bemusement at the Law Society’s elegant offices in Edinburgh. President Ian Smart pointed out that the Law Agents’ request for a special general meeting was dated 22 December: ‘They didn’t hand it in until 25 February.’ By then, the main parliamentary process was almost complete. ‘This is not the 59th minute of the 11th hour,’ he said. ‘It’s five minutes past midnight.’

The delay also gave the Law Society plenty of time to outflank its critics – even though the Law Agents had enough proxy votes to carry a special general meeting. On 5 March, the Society announced that all its 10,500 members would be invited to vote in a referendum on its policy of permitting alternative business structures.

The ballot closes after Easter and, so long as the commercial firms can get their vote out, the Law Society policy is likely to win approval. Meanwhile, the Society succeeded in having last Thursday’s meeting adjourned – after extensive discussion but before a substantive vote.

But that does not mean the Law Society had everything its own way. By all accounts, the meeting was a chastening experience for its president, himself a local solicitor in Cumbernauld. Smart said afterwards that the two sides were not as far apart as it had seemed before the meeting. ‘The decision to adjourn was taken in the hope that we might yet reach agreement on a way forward that is acceptable to the vast majority of our membership,’ he said.

This is, of course, the debate that Scottish solicitors should have had two years ago. It is likely to lead to some sort of compromise on the extent of external ownership. But any such deal will have to be acceptable to the Scottish parliament and the Office of Fair Trading.

For the Law Agents, Sheridan was sounding bullish at the end of last week. ‘We have taken control of the issue,’ he said. ‘The line is external ownership and we will not cross that line.’

But with everything left to play for, there is a moral for membership organisations everywhere: listen to your members – even if they remain silent.