Dramatic changes have been taking place in the legal profession across the globe. As regulators flex their muscles, many clients are sitting up and taking notice of issues of corporate governance.

In the UK, there has been a steady transformation since Law Society rules on marketing and promotion began to be relaxed in the late 1980s. Law firms have moved from being dusty professional practices to dynamic legal businesses, which increasingly operate more like their corporate cousins than traditional law firms.

Running parallel to this, clients exposed to the levels of quality and service delivered by corporate suppliers have come to expect those same standards from their professional advisers.