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I once picked up a consumer complaint on costs on a probate. I had to seek a remuneration certificate. Very approximately the figures were (i) An up front costs estimate was given of £3,500.00. (ii) The final bill came to £2,800.00, and (iii) the largely non-solicitor staffed Law Society's Consumer Complaints Service tore up my terms & conditions of business saying that they were too complicated for lay clients and told me to reduce the bill to £1,100.00. Even fixed fee items were reduced in price ... for a client who herself admitted that she was wealthy.

It gets worse, because not that long before a colleague had done some market research to see what firms generally were charging for similar work and it was at least £4,000.00 plus VAT. I had been the cheapest in the country at £3,500.00 with no VAT.

That is the kind of consumer orientated ethos that we have had to deal with for decades. For a long time now I've thought that the ones needing protection isn't our clients. It is us.

This is no joke. I was on the Law Society Council only very briefly, but I had a glimpse of how bad the situation really is for many thousands of firms in this country. Given the chance the authorities will order solicitors to work at a loss. I was, ... and for a client who had told them that she was wealthy!

I was one of very few on the Law Society Council who voted against setting up the current regulatory structure.

To this day I haven't understood how solicitors could possibly think that having lots of non-solicitors in positions of authority could mean anything other than doing a perfectly good job at absolutely rock bottom prices, ... and that includes putting non-solicitors in the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A proposal that websites must publish prices is almost certainly being driven by the non-solicitors at the Solicitors Regulation Authority. This is not about transparency. This is about driving down prices. You can be absolutely sure that if they thought that publishing prices on websites led to solicitors more or less charging the same with the lower priced increasing their prices to match the higher priced, this proposal would never have been made. This proposal is being made because they think that it'll force prices down as our more desperate colleagues cut their own throats and ours "competing".