I assume that if 120,000 solicitors told chief legal ombudsman Adam Sampson and the Law Society to strike out the use of the words ‘customers’ and, worse still, ‘consumers’ from usage, they will oblige? The use of the words customer and consumer is inaccurate in a professional context and ultimately patronising for those to whom it is wrongly applied. It is misinformation of the worst kind.

The – largely appreciative – people who pay my bills are neither customers nor consumers. The advice I give is not a ‘legal services one-size-fits-all product’. Do not even get me started on ‘product’.

If the powers that be want us all to act on a level playing field, then maybe one way of maximising the chances of happy, well-advised clients is to make everyone who wants to provide advice study, train and work for nine years minimum before they can start their own practice. Alternatively, let anyone, and I mean anyone, sell their non-expertise without insurance or legal education or training, and carry out 95% of my work, and decry lawyers as expensive and stuffy because that is what the market is told it needs.

Watch this space: more finger-wagging from the mandarins will surely follow.

Peter Cox, Broadstairs