Those of you who think lawyers are stuffy and un-cool, think again! The Wimbledon office of Morrisons' solicitors has been advising their local high school in the Young Enterprise competition, a Europe-wide competition that encourages groups of school and college students to set up a business for a year. And the company – called QuickZip (yes, with a 'Q') – won the Most Innovative Product prize in the regional final.

The product, a shirt that can be adapted to formal or informal functions, can be bought on e-Bay. In a press release Morrisons' announced it would be continuing to advise the school, Raynes Park in south west London, for this year's competition.

The community initiative was lauded by legal sit vacs site Professionals in Law, in its Epilogue news section. Also on the site, Morrisons' is advertising for...an insolvency solicitor. Different office, I hasten to add: the vacancy is in Woking.

Latest in a seemingly endless series of people passing themselves off as having legal skills they are not qualified for is one Marious Pimm of Cambridgeshire. Mr Pimm decided that a 2, II in law from the University of Lincoln was qualification enough to act as a barrister – leastways in his local. He was found guilty on 3 May at Peterborough Crown court of two counts of fraud and will be sentenced on 24 May.

The court heard he even joked about his wig being 'itchy' in court. Watch this space!

The plethora of cases indicates there is money to be made in the business, despite lawyers' attempts to plead poverty recently when it comes to their fees. First we had warnings that fees could be reduced by up to 50% as corporate customers sought to reduce overheads. The warning was issued by Prof Richard Susskind at the Law Society Management Conference.

According to the Law Society Gazette, "Susskind predicted bosses of both large and small companies will seek to reduce their legal spend by 50% over the next five years, as they look for ways of gaining 'more for less' through new pricing structures."

With expert witness fees being reduced in recent months, the threat is very real, particularly for those services which are not seen by the client as 'legal' work.

Prof Susskind said: "We still need lawyers with expertise that can do difficult legal work that others can't. But there is written and administrative work that clients don't want to pay big fees for anymore.

"Small firms and sole practitioners will struggle if they don't embrace new technologies. Firms will have to fold and those in the middle will have to merge."

Following on from that, the junior lawyers were struck on a nerve by a report from the SRA that said scrapping the minimum salary for trainees would result in more firms taking on trainees but at a lower rate. Naturally, cries of 'foul' were to be heard even above the din surrounding Joey Barton. The danger is that those same lawyers who are currently defending the legal system against assault by the forces of darkness (David Cameron et al) will be seduced into adopting the "work for nothing" philosophy when it comes to their own 'interns'.

Wonder how many of our expert witness directory entries advertise their services for free.

Chris Stokes