One month into your new job at the legal advice centre and you’re still behaving too much like a lawyer. Or so, knuckles sharply rapped, you’ve been told.It’s just that it was so obviously a promissory estoppel that was called for and your colleague, who wasn’t legally trained, didn’t get it at all. You asked him to run the facts past you. Next thing, you were downstairs and explaining it all to a lady whose deceased long-term partner appeared to have changed his mind about leaving the house to her. She (and her cats) feared life on the streets.

‘No problem,’ you told her. ‘It can be estopped.’ It was easy, routine even, and what you were trained for – but it was against the house rules. Your advice needs to be traceable to the database, the fount of all knowledge. And you, in the words of the supervisor, were ‘off-piste’.

It was ironic to be told you were too much the lawyer. Your practising certificate lapsed at the end of October and you can’t afford to renew it. That hurts, 10 years post-qualification.

Some of the transformation from lawyer to touchy-feely adviser was easy. Going into work in jeans and a T-shirt is liberating. You haven’t missed the commute, and all those scowling sniffers and snorers, at all. And if you were honest with yourself, you were ready for a break from commercial leases – for now.

Your working life has certainly become varied. Wednesday morning you dealt with a disability living allowance application from a lady with a personality disorder. You then helped a guy deal with the utility companies. He was recovering from a catastrophic nervous breakdown and they were threatening to cut off supplies, piling more stress on a man who was already unable to cope.

There’s lots of housing work, too. Landlord and tenant stuff mainly: rent arrears, eviction, repairs and all that good stuff. Not to mention employment problems: unfair dismissal, bullying and discrimination in all its manifestations.

Yesterday, you visited a young woman in hospital who had just been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She was too scared to talk to her 'guards'. You tried to reassure her that all would be OK.

And so the first month has gone by. Not so long ago, your working day was about completions and keeping your corporate clients happy. Now you’re learning about job seekers’ allowance, mental health, debt, registering at the Court of Protection, employment tribunals, homelessness and disenfranchised lone teenagers.

Your clients have opened your eyes to a world far removed from lawyers on City salaries. Have you always had a social conscience, you wonder? You look in the mirror and there’s no change there. Your life is very different, but is it better?

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