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Funnily enough I posted about this straight after the Court of Appeal. The posts immediately got deleted.

The reason why the Law Society and Bar Council intervened (and their Lordships duly remembered their loyalties to the legal elite) is that the implications of this would be catastrophic.

Indeed, I think they still are. Anon above says he has no wish to send £500 on the application to practice and £25k for the costs of regulation. But of course it wouldn't work like that.

You would be told to pay £500 for the practising certificate, and £10,000 for general regulatory costs.

In a separate application, you would be asked whether you choose to pay a further £15,000 to defray the costs of having champagne lunches for the Law Society Council, the costs of having your Law Society enter into commercial ventures with insurance brokers and software companies, the costs of having overblown websites, the costs of having expensive premises in Central London.

Not to say the costs of paying for a Law Society Gazette, the costs of paying for Free PR for Co-Op law and Quality Solicitors, the costs of paying for a working party to visit the Bahamas Bar Association three week summer conference, the costs of paying for a City Law Firm Symposium on whether non-dom status should be extended to those who reside in the country for five months per year, etc., etc.

EU Law effectively says that all those additional costs are non-recoverable. One day, if I get the time, I may incorporate a new company in an EU country and apply for an ABS licence, and refuse to pay the practising certificate on the grounds that the majority of the money has nothing to do with the costs of regulation, and is thus discriminatory.

Saying that, I can't see the present set up lasting too long anyway. The writing is on the wall for the present system of legal regulation.