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Did anyone else feel almost stunned into silence reading this headline, and almost struggle to make it through the content? Not a comment on the quality of reporting, it’s about the content.

There is a pyramid analogy that I like, about being at the top means you can only clearly see what is next to you and immediately below, and everything else you have some awareness of but nothing else. Being a cynic, and understanding how govt would find it easier if all the country’s legal professionals worked across 50 big companies instead of hundreds of smaller firms, it feels like the treatments of small firms is to achieve exactly that – eliminate the little guy.

And it isn’t just law, it’s accountants, brokers, manufacturers etc. It isn’t so much promoting big business as much as it is punishing or taking punitive actions against small business.

If this genuinely is the first the HOL is aware, I despair more than ever. And successive govts have, for the last 40 years or so, taken the approach of “dealing” with things they don’t like by either banning or taxing them out of existence – I give it a year until we know which it will be for smaller law firms.