The bar has been criticised for being slow to respond to the opportunities presented by the Legal Services Act. Indeed, some solicitors may have been lulled into a false sense of security by its apparent inertia.

Barristers have never been greatly renowned for their managerial or business acumen. Cloistered in their historic chambers in the Temple or Lincoln’s Inn, they are more commonly perceived as deliberately removed from the ‘real’ commercial world.

However, things are changing, as we have reported over recent weeks.

Gazette writers visit chambers all the time. Increasingly, it is not the head of chambers or a couple of barristers on ‘paperwork days’ who make themselves available, but the commercial director, the business development manager, or the marketing director.

These professionals have well-developed and ambitious plans for capitalising on changes to the practising rules.

The Bar Council, meanwhile, has issued guidance for chambers seeking to set up a new business model – the ProcureCo - that allows them to bid for work in competition with solicitors.

The bar has not only woken up to the fact that it needs to operate more commercially, but is getting on and doing it. The indications are that, in time, our learned friends will prove a force to be reckoned with, and solicitors need to be alive to this new challenge.