We welcome two new members to the club of long-serving legal stalwarts: secretaries at Suffolk firm Greene & Greene who have clocked up a combined total of 84 years’ service.

Lorraine Palfrey joined the firm in October 1966 as an office junior, being promoted to secretarial duties in April 1967 when Christine Faiers-Sanderson (then 16) arrived.

Both remember Michael Batt, now senior partner, joining the firm as an articled clerk. His elevation is not the only change they have seen in the world of law.

In October 1966, the Gazette's report on the fourth annual conference of the Commerce & Industry Group observed that ‘lady guests gracefully decorated and enriched the social scene’. Donations were invited to the Governesses’ Benevolent Fund – and the practising certificate was what was then, no doubt, an eye-watering £11 a year.

In April 1967, when Faiers-Sanderson joined the firm, the Gazette editor fulminated against those who considered conveyancing no more complex than ‘filling in a few simple forms’.

The issue carried part two of The intelligent woman’s guide to corporation tax and an article on legal aid saying the ‘system has worked very well’ but deploring ‘odd gaps’ that could deny access to justice.

How things have changed since then.