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Last week two things happened that sum up the problem.

First I went to my local post office to pick up an important looking letter from my Spanish regulator in Madrid. It was signed for, with an advice of delivery card, full seal of the College of Lawyers, and when I opened it ... nothing. They'd received a complaint by a lawyer on behalf of some former clients and the letter specifically said that they were not going to do anything about it.

The next day I got a phone call from a potential client desperately looking for a firm to take on his case. When I said that the only firm I knew that might have the technical expertise and the financial resources to run it was Irwin Mitchell, he said that they had turned him down. He had phoned a number of firms and they had all refused to take him on. I said that the firms in Spain would be happy to have his business, which I knew they were, and I also said that he could forget about phoning the big city firms like Clifford Chance, Lovells, Freshfields, but maybe if he could find a Scottish connection I knew a firm in Scotland that might be interested ...