Let’s face it: when it comes to passing trade, some law firms have an advantage over others. Obiter called in at the Co-op store at London’s Charing Cross this week for his quotidien bottle of gin and was surprised on inserting his bank card into the payment terminal to find the display screen asking if he was ‘aware that we now offerlegal services - yes or no’.

Well, yes. And funerals ‘conducted with decorum and taste’, too, if we remember right. How to fight back? Perhaps high street firms could stock their reception areas with tins of beans and loaves of Mother’s Pride. And the occasional coffin.