My late father – Austin senior, a very good lawyer and a frustrated song and dance man (thank God they didn’t have the X Factor in his day – he would have been the SuBo of the late 60s) used to say that he had too good an imagination. By this he meant that he could see the consequences before they happened – he was always running over to women about to push a pram into the road while chatting to a friend, or a child about to tread on a garden rake. He could also think through the results of a proposed course of action and was a very good strategist for clients - and occasionally a killjoy for us kids. He was years ahead of the law on compulsory seatbelts, making us all belt up, as it were. I can see the blood and the smashed bones, he would say to us.

I have inherited the curse. And a curse it is, as it has a tendency to see the worst outcomes, smother enthusiasm for new projects, and render one cautious when a punt might be an option. It’s not quite “We’re Doomed!” a la Fraser from Dad’s Army, but you do get a reputation as a dampener.

Such success as I may have had as a solicitor has not been in outgunning other more learned colleagues in pure knowledge of the law (no, really), but in marshalling options and working through them in my mind to see what the likely range of results would be – is that called critical path analysis? And as I developed my firm, I filled in the gaps of knowledge of business practice, management and entrepreneurship that they didn’t teach at Uni when I was there, nor in the apprenticeship (yes, I do predate the diploma). There still is a gentleman/player distinction in the legal profession, sadly. The fee-earners feel themselves superior to the managers, though I am now more interested personally in the number crunching, the IT system and the marketing strategy than the casework.

But whichever bit of the profession you operate in, imagination is key. As regular readers will know, I have a spy/superhero fetish. Bond and Batman are my celluloid (or maybe it’s digital now) heroes. In "Casino Royale", Bond is debating with Vesper Lynd, who is glamorously supplying the Government money 007 is gambling with at the card game, and tells her that you don’t play your own hand, you play your opponent’s. This is a very neat shorthand for, amongst other things, how you run a business - probably any business, but certainly a solicitor one. You don’t focus on your own assets, knowledge and services, you focus on what the market wants, what clients expect, what the sheriff will require. And lawyers are not always good at that. Still too many of us think we are dispensing wisdom and advice, instead of providing a service. The distinction may be fine, but it is crucial. And at very least, the clients understand it and come away from consultation and representation knowing if their lawyer is conscious of providing a service, or just acting to get a result and make a fee.

I have gigantic respect for the Faculty of Advocates, but I can’t help the feeling that they are not keyed into this way of looking at the function of the advocate. The Faculty retains its sense of itself, and has a keen sense of duty both public and professional, but the service element appears to be provided at a personal level – the advocates we as a firm use are those who time and again go the extra mile for us and for the clients (in fact they never do anything but that). But we all know the stories of those who are more demanding, less simpatico with the foibles of clients, and who struggle to gain the confidence of the clients at that personal level. Structurally, the Faculty seems to hold to its status, its position, which can easily come over as aloofness from the dynamic, client-friendly development that the rest of us are well-embarked upon. Its steadfastness in the face of ABS change is eloquent of its sincerely-held principles - but possible lack of imagination.

Some might say that down here in the trenches imagination is now running riot, with the weird and wonderful ABS’s being dreamed up as new vehicles for delivering legal services and earning legal bucks. Calling ABS “Tesco law” is just a tabloid handle on what has a fairly infinite range of possibilities. My own feeling (and I am speaking personally, not in any of my Law Society of Scotland roles) is that the very Tesco idea – legal services being offered by retail companies either instore or online - will be a failure. Indeed I don’t think many companies will try it. Tesco are all about selling packaged commodities. Little in the way of legal services is neat. The bulk cut-price conveyancing boys know this well enough, and are never done explaining to their clients that what they are providing per transaction is strictly limited, and they do not give legal advice over the phone or sort out post-contract difficulties within the fixed fee. And that’s just domestic conveyancing. Ask any general practitioner, even with a limited range, if he or she ever has two cases, or even days, the same. Never. Supermarkets will crash and burn. I just hope – now wearing my Law Society of Scotland hat – that they don’t screw, or screw up, too many trusting clients on the way down.

In terms of business model, I always thought pile-em high, sell-em cheap was not a safe way to work. I may be old-fashioned, but to me the client bank is the foundation of the business. Treat clients like cattle, sell your services cheap, and what does that get you but a discontented rabble? I need the clients to go away knowing they have been served personally and professionally (and quickly and pleasantly) so that they might very welcome back, and might even recommend their daughter, sister, father, work pal, employees, golf club friend to come to us. I don’t believe in advertising for its own sake. We have occasionally tried different techniques in the past, but the only sustainable and dependable way to sustain and grow the clientele in the high street is by osmosis – client by client, case by case, day by day.

There is also the question of image. Most people in Scotland, and probably elsewhere, want their lawyers to be, frankly, a cut above the average. If you are making a will, or worried about your marriage coming to an end, or buying a house, then unless you are a cheapo (and yes, there are plenty of them about – I am always delighted when they don’t accept our fee quote and go elsewhere, as I always reckon they will be a difficult and unpleasant client in direct proportion to their fee meanness, and we have had a close escape) you will want to have quality representing you. A divorce is not like a box of Daz, a will is not like a white loaf. And on the basis that I only really want the clients who value our quality and are prepared to pay a fair fee, I am not at all fazed at the idea of Tesco, or whoever, taking away the clients and cases which we are happy to avoid. I would rather be BMW than Arnold Clark (maybe it’s not a good analogy, I don’t have car snobbery – indeed I have been a customer of old Arnold for decades, run a cheap and cheerful car, and would never buy a luxurious waste of money).

Actually, the ABS thing is not anyway going to satisfy the consumer lobby, who are in any event asking the wrong question, and fearing the wrong demons. I don’t see urgent or fundamental change in the way we do business coming about, not for a long time anyway. The actual impetus for structural change is something entirely different – it is at the behest of the big firms who want to attract alternative sources of capital and re-position themselves to provide a wider range of services to cross-sell to existing and potential clients - and good luck to them. As long as regulation (watch this space, it is already showing as the new battleground - see The Firm Contents page) is right, our big firms can get leverage on wider markets and do better and better in them. But that doesn’t affect me either.

So much for geopolitics or whatever you might all it. My interest in legal practice is, as well as the admin and business side, human psychology. And I remain engrossed at the stories and lives presented to me for assistance. It is astounding how so many stumble through existence with such limited imagination. Criminal clients do not think of the consequences of their actions , sometimes those consequences are second after those actions – and probably just well we don’t have too many intelligent criminals, by the way. Couples let their marriages fizzle or flare, apparently unable to step out of their own selfishness or hurt or blaming and imagine a different way to be. Business clients speak of their attempts to outwit competitors or cut corners in ways that are almost pathetic in their obtusity. I don’t sit and crow. Like colleagues I sympathise and do everything I can to help them and respect their dignity.

But as a race, we have the flaw. Not only are we cursed with repeating our mistakes in history by forgetting them, we often – too often – make new mistakes by not thinking ahead. Mea culpa – I am far from perfect. But there is another dynamic present. As well as the spies and superheroes, I like science fiction, especially of a spaceship shape. In "Men in Black", the gnarled old agent played by Tommy Lee Jones explains to the new agent (Will Smith) that their gargantuan planetary alien control and earth defence operations are kept secret from the world population because it is the only way to allow humankind to remain blissfully happy and carry on with their lives. And this is true more generally of our race. W all know some folk that seem to swan through life missing all the puddles. They are happy, content, not subject to the stresses and cares and terrors that people with imaginations have. And as for my Dad and me? Last film reference – the greatest film ever made: "It’s A Wonderful Life". George is planning the future with his dad, and says his younger brother, Harry, can take his job at the Building & Loan to let him (George) at last go to college. Dad says Harry is too young. George answers by saying it is the same age at which he started work. And the father’s famous response to George is “ You were born older”.

Some –many – of us were born older. We are the shepherds, we worry, so the sheep don’t get worried. And often enough, we have the weight of the world on us. Yes, it is often a curse. What delight to not have to think of everything.

The genie is out of the bottle, you can’t un-ring the bell of responsibility – but I probably would not now have it any other way now. My Dad’s description was correct - like him I have too good an imagination. I’m stuck with it.