Against the uncompetitive field of exciting public procurement developments, the launch last April by the Office for Government Commerce (OGC) of its ‘super panel’ was reckoned by many to be as good as it gets.

The shake-up created the ‘Legal Category’ panel, dubbed ‘L-Cat’, which was supposed to be a template for all government legal services procurement – knocking some £7m off Whitehall’s annual legal bill.