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One can take some comfort in the traditional structure of this firm comprising equity sharing solicitors, who were immediately alive to the mischief in terms of ethics, to an extent that might have escaped many a modern ABS firms.

Lord Neuberger may have just such circumstances in mind when he commented in his Lord Slynn Lecture 2016 :

“Lawyers can now go into partnership with members of other professions, and they can enter into arrangements whereby non-lawyer investors can manage and/or own and invest in law firms. The risk of conflict in an ABS, where the law firm is owned wholly or partly by non-lawyers, is obvious: the investors will often have no experience of, or interest in, the lawyers’ ethical duties, and will often be ultimately only concerned with the bottom line. The pressure they may put on the lawyers in the firm is likely to be such as to increase the potential for conflicts…”

One can imagine many an ABS firm where these allegations would never have seen the light of day.