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I am reading this article and the comments as I sit and wait for the Lexcel assessor to drop her axe after an AMV1 revisit. I have worked non-stop for weeks, including evenings and weekends, to get the practice documentation ready and to go through the checklist etc. I didn't train for this. I trained as a Legal Executive and then a Solicitor. I have been qualified for 15 years this year, and do less and less actual legal work because I am too busy dealing with the compliance and regulatory stuff. Yes, it's great, Lexcel gives you a bit of a helping hand with the PII renewal quotes, but it's a lot of work. It's not that firms do things that are not Lexcel compliant, but you have to evidence everything, every step, like a flowchart almost. Things that are second nature to you have to be broken down into steps and evidenced at each one.

I'm writing this because I'm stressed. I look back fondly on the days when I would work overtime - for no more pay - and weekends, to keep up to date when I was not a qualified solicitor, but was a qualified Legal Executive. I was busy, I had a huge case load, but it was free of too many tangles of regulation. I had happy clients who had cases settled quickly, and reasonably. E-mails were becoming the new thing, but people didn't expect an immediate knee-jerk response - you had time to consider and give proper advice. We had decent payments for costs, all earned legitimately. I worked hard, but it was work that gave some satisfaction. I can't remember the last day recently that I went home thinking I'd done anything worthwhile.

Maybe it's the mood I'm in today, but I'm identifying heavily with the stressed young lawyers. As others have said, it only gets worse as more and more responsibility is either inherited or more likely sought out. This profession is now a business, and professionalism is something that we cling to but sadly cannot afford due to changes in our regulation, ABS entries, costs rules. Being a solicitor is a far less satisfactory profession than it used to be because it has been devalued in the eyes of the general public due to us being an easy target for the government and the media.

Bottom line - if I had my time over again, and was younger, I'd probably do something else. If I was starting out now, I'd take one look at the regulation and remuneration available and hightail it in the opposite direction. Sad to realise that...