It has been a long time coming, but the Bar Standards Board finally made a decision last week to allow barristers to go into partnership, not only with each other, but even with those dreadfully commercial solicitor types. It may have taken five consultations and two years of deliberation, but the BSB finally decided to take the plunge. Or did it?It has openly deferred the issue of whether barristers should be able to join alternative business structures. But as to the ‘historic’ decision to allow barristers and solicitors to go into partnership together, it turns out that there is no actual timescale for this to happen either.

Why not? Perhaps the BSB is picking up on the somewhat lukewarm attitude towards the Legal Services Act 2007 that is emanating from what will probably be the ruling party come next election.

As the Gazette reported last week, Conservative shadow justice minister Henry Bellingham has said that when it comes to legal services reforms, he prefers a gradual revolution to the ‘big bang’ approach.

He said the Tories would seek to slow down the introduction of ABSs, adding that he was sympathetic to the bar’s cautious approach to ABSs ‘because they take the same view that we do – that this has got to evolve slowly’.

Bellingham has said he does not intend to reverse the Legal Services Act, but from the sound of things he is not exactly red hot on the idea of sweeping reforms to the current status quo. Perhaps if the BSB procrastinates for long enough, the Conservatives might decide to do away with Labour’s shakeup of legal services altogether, and the whole nasty business will go away.