I’ve never quite understood the obsession with celebrating new year’s eve.

There’s an enormous build-up, endless boring chat about the future and a few party poppers. Then it’s over, with just dark wintry evenings and uncertainty to look forward to.

For those in the legal world, we’ve got to experience this anticlimax twice over - once on 1 January and again two days later.

This was the moment when the Solicitors Regulation Authority finally got its hands on alternative business structures (ABSs), when Tesco law became a reality.

Only Tesco doesn’t want to be involved - not even, in its time-honoured way, with even a little helping. Five years of free advertising and they don’t even have the courtesy to take part. I guess we’ll have to find some other way of explaining ABSs to the masses.

In fact, the advent of ABSs has felt like a party with hardly any guests. The AA and Saga are holding fire, whilst there were no surprise announcements waiting in my inbox yesterday morning: either a company PR missed an easy opportunity or businesses are more cautious about the brave new world than we imagined.

Co-op and Irwin Mitchell have arrived fashionably early, each eyeing up the buffet of the legal services market and posting their intention to apply. Indeed by 4pm on 3 January the SRA had received ‘more than 10 applications’ from prospective ABSs - hardly the kind of figure to send shock waves through the sector.

On the subject of the SRA, it will be fascinating to see how it responds to this challenge. The authority will now have to deal with alien organisations, with equity investors and listed companies. It will be scrutinised and openly doubted more than ever before.

There are many out there, not least those who regularly comment on the Gazette website, who will question whether the authority is up to the task.

We shall see. In its favour, it is making the right noises. This week’s authorisation was accompanied by pledges to execute ‘rigorous and robust’ regulation, on a par with that afforded to traditional law firms.

Those who predicted supermarkets and equity investors would get an easy ride will also be heartened to hear ABS licences could take nine months to secure. This lengthy process has ensured the expected big bang was nothing of the sort, more an administrative milestone.

But like every new year’s eve, one anticlimactic night is no indication of the dramas of the year to come. There are still important players looking to exploit the evolving legal market - and if they begin to make profits, expect a glut of new entrants to follow them.

Change is coming, albeit laboriously. The legal profession could still look radically different when we bring in 2013.

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