I was talking to a colleague recently in a law firm and we got to talking about the recent skipping of the generation in the Conservative Party election.

I highlighted that this was probably the last hurrah for the supposed big beasts of the Conservative Party and my colleague highlighted the number of lumbering dinosaurs of partners in the firm that were also a real block to progress because of an unwillingness to adopt modern working practices. It will be interesting to see how the Clementi reforms and recently published white paper affect legal firms in the Birmingham area.

For me I think that law firm partners haven't fully appreciated what Clementi will do No more must firms be partnerships. They can if they want to, but the reforms will hand them the opportunity to structure themselves differently; as publicly-listed companies, multi-disciplinary practices or both.

I think that the smaller firms who deal in the bread and butter stuff that can be easily commoditised and dealt with by a call centre could well happen and sooner than we think. Just look at the strides that the Supermarkets made tackling the hitherto sacrosanct area of financial services.

I think that maybe lock step may be replaced by a kill what you eat model and partners are going to be appraised and have to lead more from the front and be more aware of modern management practices and there may need to be less consensual management if your practice is going to survive.

There will be a need I believe for lawyers to hire in a non lawyer CEO/COO to run the practice, while new partners are trained up to provide the more rounded skills that the new speed of business will demand.