I see that that venerable London institution, the London Evening Standard, is becoming a freebie after 182 years of Londoners paying for it. The most interesting comment on this came from the Standard’s editor Geordie Greig: 'I think the digital generation have got used to not paying for information.'

In stark contrast, I often hear solicitors say that their websites should give just enough information away to tempt prospective clients to want (and pay for) more, but that telling them any more would be 'giving away the Crown jewels'. Get real folks, have you looked in the crypt recently? The Crown jewels have long gone.

Mr Greig is spot on. The younger generation have never known a life without the internet – it is ingrained in them that all of life’s mysteries can be explained if you’re imaginative with Google, Wikipedia and the like. Whether or not this is true is beside the point; people believe it to be the case, so it is.

The older members of the so-called younger generation aren’t so young any more. They are becoming today’s, not tomorrow’s, private and commercial clients and their expectations are way beyond most firms’ traditional means of dispensing advice and legal services. If your firm insists on trying to keep legal knowledge a secret, be sure that a competitor not far from you will not. The new breed of client will seek out free information and guidance and when they really need the skill that only a solicitor can provide, they are more likely to go to a firm that attracted them in the first place through a helpful online presence.

The Standard is changing, and so are the (pun intended) times.