It’s not only red grouse that will need to keep their heads down on 12 August this year. The Glorious Twelfth is also the date when the Insurance Act 2015 comes into effect, imposing significant new obligations on law firms buying professional indemnity insurance. The Act will impose a new duty on a law firm to make a ‘fair presentation’ of its risk to its insurer. Without overstating it, this new duty is a deep bear trap for the unwary and it will not be sufficient simply to say ‘that’s what we pay our insurance brokers for’.

I’ve long wondered what use the rankings of lawyers, particularly barristers, are in the legal directories. Essentially, you get some of your mates to say nice things about you (you’re not going to do otherwise, now, are you?). Then you pay (how much depends on how much of it you want to be in print) the directories to reproduce these nice things and come up with some artificial rankings in a host of different categories.

Lord Justice Jackson’s lecture, Fixed costs: the time has come, has been characterised by his many critics as his latest assault on access to justice. However, it is reasonable to ask whether an even more fundamental question should also be considered: is there any justification for regulating costs by statute, rule or the judiciary once fixed costs are introduced. That costs are regulated by the courts on the basis of legislation and rules has been in position for so long that it might seem natural to treat it as a given. This approach, however, dates back to a much less sophisticated market for legal services.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) has published its plans to become a regulator for all the reserved legal activities under the Legal Services Act 2007. This will in due course require approval by the Legal Service Board. The ICAEW is already a regulator for probate activities but this application marks a step change that would enable it to authorise accountancy firms to carry out advocacy, litigation and the other reserved legal activities. The proposal raises a number of problematic issues.

It is somewhat appropriate that Slater & Gordon sponsors England cricket captain Alastair Cook, no stranger himself to sudden collapses. Yesterday’s results could not really have been much worse, for owners, investors and staff alike, with those in the UK now bracing themselves for redundancies. Schadenfreude abounded on social media and some websites, but the real shame is that, until last year, Slater & Gordon was a significant success story.