What a breath of fresh air the brave new legal services market is proving. It seems one can hardly move for fear of colliding with a new legal services business model. Sometimes literally, as Obiter discovered painfully the other day.

LawSurgery.com promises users the chance to ‘Go direct to a barrister (no need for often costly solicitors) – come in today to book a consultation: only £99’. But after tripping over the venture’s pavement billboard (pictured), Obiter feels the surgery’s marketing team is on something of a learning curve – the billboard is placed on a pavement that can only be described as the ‘lawyer end’ of London’s Fleet Street.

Excluding barristers, the target market for this bit of the street would seem to be solicitors from Freshfields, Lewis Silkin or Slater & Gordon on their way to, or from, the RCJ – or perhaps folk whose miscarriage of justice has just been quashed.

Obiter is never the cynic, so would just like to say the business strategy strikes one as a little bit ‘niche’.