The Legal Services Board’s discussion paper on regulation of alternative business structures is most significant for its bold and unambiguous statements of intent. No matter that the UK’s legal services sector is already ‘internationally competitive and highly regarded’, restrictive practices have ‘constrained consumer choice’ and prevented the sector from ‘realising its full potential’.

The revolution is coming in mid-2011, whether the approved regulators are ready or not. The board will license ABSs directly if they have not got their act together, even though it admits there is a ‘lack of consensus’ about the risks.

For those would-be counter-revolutionaries who remain, the paper offers little encouragement. Fears that fundamental regulatory risks might be unique to an open market are briskly discounted: ‘Our initial assessment... is that many risks... are already a feature of the legal sector today’. The board has signalled that it will have scant sympathy for those who claim that a looming threat to small firms may imperil access to justice. ‘It is not clear that new entrants represent a real threat to efficient businesses or consumers,’ it observes. ‘It is arguable that the scope to innovate is potentially as great for small practices as for larger firms. The demise of the high-street firm is not an inevitable outcome of opening the market.’

Time will tell.