We all know that nothing in life is certain. As the actor, director and philosopher Clint Eastwood once said: “If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.” He also said he’d tried being reasonable and didn’t like it. They should teach this kind of philosophy in law school. One thing in life is reasonably certain though. If you’re a law firm worth your salt, at some point you will be approached by another entity (most probably a work introducer) with a whizzy idea to ‘partner’ with you to ‘help you accelerate your growth’. In commercial speak this means, ‘we’d like to keep feeding you work but we’d also like to share in your profits’. The arrangement may be pitched to you as a joint venture – a win-win no less.

The skills shortage in our businesses is the biggest threat to our industry when looking at cybercrime. Cybercriminals are not just after money but are looking for sensitive information too, so the legal services sector is an obvious target. In the last year we have had reports of around £7m of client money being lost to such crime. This is not an IT issue and it should not be left to the IT teams to sort out. It is a high-level responsibility and a board-level issue that must be taken seriously. We suspect that we will look back on 2016 and ask why we didn’t respond quicker.

When it comes to business, there’s no point in having a plan A unless you’ve got a plan B. While plan A might be the route to profits, plan B is the means of surviving, whatever challenges you come up against. Every business is at risk of potential natural or man-made disasters. Despite our wishful thinking, sometimes the dreaded ‘what if’ scenarios become a harsh reality. While we all hope for the best, it’s essential to prepare for the worst. Then there are minor interruptions which, with adequate forethought, can be circumnavigated completely. So, what’s your plan to recover from disaster and get back on track to plan A? And, what’s your plan for continuing running your business during lesser disturbances?

It was only in January that I wrote how we religiously attend meetings of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s board. Well, may the appropriate deity (the SDT?) forgive me, because we lapsed only a week or so later: the meeting was being held in Birmingham and such was the paucity of the agenda that it simply didn’t justify the time or cost of the trip. But now we can drop the habit for good as the SRA has decided to stop open meetings altogether and limit reporters to a briefing afterwards.

In part one of this blog, I set out what the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) says it is concentrating on as ‘priority risks’, and some others that they have missed. These are the ‘imminent threats’ to the profession and the users of legal services, and it is absolutely right for the SRA to focus on them. However, instead of these priority risks, here is what you are likely to hear most about this year, ranging from Handbook reform, the unregulated sector and the SQE, to transparency, independence from the Law Society, and enforcement.