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Lord Justice Thomas is heading a new expert group to advise the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards on developing and operating the controversial quality assurance for advocates scheme, it has emerged. Meanwhile, the BSB has hit out again at the Legal Services Board’s “unhelpful and ill-timed” intervention over the scheme.

Why be a solicitor? That is a question that will be asked ever more frequently in the coming years when you could become a legal executive or a licensed conveyancer and, in all likelihood, enjoy most if not all of the same rights and privileges as solicitors.

Competence testing is a delicate subject which legal regulators approach with considerable caution. It has been talked about – indeed, SRA chief executive Antony Townsend expressed his desire to move towards it when appointed in 2006 – but the fear with such schemes is that practitioners view them as a form of punishment, rather than being about professional development, maintaining high standards and reassuring the public.

I’m not sure whether or not it is ironic that the Legal Services Act – which in many senses in a deregulatory measure – may well end up delivering tighter regulation of legal services in some ways.