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The number of solicitor applications for a grant of probate has fallen for the fourth year running, down 30% since 2006, although the drop slowed last year, indicating perhaps that greater competition in the probate market is making itself felt.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has hit back at opposition from the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Society to its application to grant rights to conduct advocacy and litigation. The Legal Services Board is currently considering the CLC’s application, and as one of its statutory consultees, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge has expressed his total opposition.

It’s not often that I recommend that people plough through some of the turgid consultations that I plough through on their behalf, but I very much do in the case of the Legal Services Board’s distinctly unturgid discussion document on how it will “assess the boundaries of legal services regulation and connected regulatory decisions”. It is an extremely hard document to do justice to in a news story. This is big stuff – the future shape of legal practice.

There is a strong consumer protection justification for making the whole conveyancing process a reserved legal activity, Professor Stephen Mayson has argued in the final version of his influential report on the case for reservation. He said the “guarantee” of title registration is incomplete.

The confused system of regulation for legal services risks leaving consumers without protection when things go wrong, especially with unregulated businesses “masquerading as traditional law firms, branded with more legal wigs and gowns than you can shake a quill pen at”, the Legal Ombudsman has warned.