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The interesting part of the above article is:-

"In evidence, it cites ‘the levels of unmet need identified in research looking at both individual and small-business consumers’.
It suggests that ‘it is perhaps more likely that the market cannot sustain the number of lawyers at the current cost’.

Consider the cost of the regulatory, compliance and statutory requirements our clients and we solicitors have to go through.
Tescos and it's customers don't have these expensive hoops to jump through for a weekly shop.
Dropping these paranoid micro management over-regulation costs would make our services affordable to many of the 95% who can't afford us now. Thats closer to "justice for all" than legal aid has ever got us.

I am concerned at this dumbing down of qualification being driven by the owners of factories of para-legals using simple case management systems. They aren't the future. They are yesterday's technology and yesterdays model.
Today's "off the shelf" technology for High Street practice replaces para-legals, book keepers and support staff. The model is cheaper, more accessable, with a higher quality output.
Tomorow it's off the shelf Cloud Computing that provides near automated legal advice and assistance. Siri and Google Voice are complex program and server architectures housed in vast centralised systems. These architectures will, within 10 years, allow near automation of legal services. Our role will be that of High Street interface, quality control and representation. It will require solicitors with a very high standard of legal knowledge, of practice experience, and the IQs to meet that standard.

The future of High Street practice is very bright. But we face opposition from clueless and manipulated policy makers in the MoJ, the Law Society and the LSB. They keep pushing to impose clerk factory structures that dumb down, concentrate ownership, and drive out of business High Street practice.

Whether we are driven by enabling greater access to justice or protecting our income, the route is the same. Common sense regulation and the adoption of new technology in High Street practice. The former requires a representative body capable of sharing the vision with policy makers and the public. The later requires new blood in high street practice by either new firms or new equity partners.

As things stand, we're stuffed.
Our representative body is bereft of vision, and has abdicated it's duty to it's membership and the public purse.
The equity partners in our High Street firms are so entangled with personal income, they have forgotten their role is to lead a group of fellow professionals.