The Home Office this week announced preferred suppliers of the first two big IT systems in its programme to create a national identity card. The contracts, which include a 10-year deal to create the national biometric information system, mark the first step towards making the card an everyday reality by 2011.

Solicitors should be interested for two reasons. The first, no less important for the shrillness with which it is sometimes articulated, is the civil liberties argument. Whatever the government says, ID cards will change the relationship between citizens and state. It’s not too late to join in that debate.

The second reason is more prosaic. Because of their pivotal role in certifying identity, solicitors are going to be early adopters of the ID infrastructure, whether they like it or not. Recent measures against money laundering and land title fraud have passed yet more responsibility onto the legal profession to verify the identities of clients and other parties to transactions. It would be useful to know now what role the new national ID register is intended have in this process – for example, whether law firms will be expected to buy card-reading devices, and at what cost, or to mandate that their staff carry their own cards.

The Home Office has made plenty of enemies already with this scheme. It can ill afford to alienate solicitors further.