Seemingly out of the blue on 24 July 2003, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the agency that would soon be rechristened the Ministry of Justice, made an announcement that marked one of the most significant interventions in the legal industry in recent memory.
It signalled the appointment of Prudential chairman David Clementi to lead a sweeping review of legal services regulation and kicked off more than eight years of upheaval in the profession that is not only still playing out but, in early 2012, looks about to reach a new level of intensity.
