It is just two weeks since the ‘super-regulator’ the Legal Services Board told lawyers to ditch jargon, bizarrely holding utility companies up as exemplars. 

It’s fair to say Gazette readers didn’t entirely agree.

Perhaps it might be worth the board having a word with its Legal Services Act stablemate, the Legal Services Consumer Panel. The panel’s newly published work programme for 2016/17 is a masterclass in corporate speak.

The document starts ominously, with chair Elisabeth Davies opining: ‘If I had to highlight just one thing that has struck me about the last year then it would be the emerging role of consumer segmentation.’

Consumer segmentation is literally all they’re talking about down the Dog and Pheasant.

Then it’s a game of jargon bingo, from ‘nuanced problems require nuanced solutions’ to the ‘legal services ecosystem’.

Setting out a busy year for the panel, the programme announced plans to ‘maximise the impact of our consumer vulnerability toolkit with regulators’ and ‘support the Legal Ombudsman in finessing and honing its key performance indicators’.

And how will the panel measure success? Why, it will ‘conduct occasional reputation audits with selected stakeholders’ of course.

Obiter’s personal favourite is probably the desire to ‘understand interdependencies within our workstreams and tightening our focus’. Whatever that means.

Answers on a postcard please.

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