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Legal services are generally a distress purchase to sort a problem. The client doesn't want to be using a lawyer, resents paying for the fees and will think it is not great value no matter how good the job is done because it is money they feel they shouldn't have to pay because the problem itself, which the lawyer is paid to sort, is nearly always unjustified in the client's eyes. This is a profession, which unfortunately is being diluted in terms of its professionalism on a daily basis. This is largely down to the desire, largely by non lawyers who now 'review' the profession and 'regulate' the profession but who have not got a clue and many of them have spent their entire lives in government organisations and quangos- not even the real business world. This leads to silly statements that ABS' are game changers, great for the customer and market. Is any of this good for the customer from what anyone has seen? Give me one example where customers (no longer clients) have come out and said they are very pleased, I am a lawyer of 20 years standing in a very forward looking firm- but would I trust my own legal work to one of these ABS I have seen setting up? Not a chance as I know exactly the type of fee earner doing that work. Now it looks like there are renewed moves to unregulated and open up even further, for the benefit of all. They may as well strip all regulation out tomorrow, let anyone set up a legal practise without qualified people, and let the market decide who they want to use. When faced with a market flooded by cowboys, the market would decide. As the various private equity set ups have realised, making this work successfully is not easy.