Here’s a thought: the law is to be fully exposed to the unfettered free market, yet the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has dominated government policy for three decades – and which gave birth to the Legal Services Act – is suddenly tainted. Does this matter?

A high-powered roundtable on the act describes what some will view as a bleak picture of the future. It is a Fordist tableau of assembly lines, commoditisation and cost-cutting. A market in which new entrants view legal services like a tin of baked beans – something to be sourced, costed, marked up and flogged. When one of private equity’s ‘masters of the universe’ talks about the ‘frankly mouth-watering’ margins to be found in the law, it is natural to feel unease.

It is not protectionist to contemplate what corporate capture might actually mean. A much-publicised new book, The Gods that Failed, a stark critique of market fundamentalism by the journalists and economists Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, is worth a read on this ground alone. They believe the public will receive worse legal services from corporates, who will cherry-pick their ‘customers’ and offer a two-tier service. They also highlight the danger of ‘undermining an independent professional class, which has value as a source of advice and as a bulwark against the power of companies and the state’. Powerful stuff – and alarmist? We’re all about to find out.