"No-sourcing", explains legal futurologist Professor Richard Susskind in his new book Tomorrow's Lawyers,  is "the option of choosing not to undertake a legal task at all". Hmmm...

Worryingly for the legal profession, it appears that Susskind's use of the term is a first – adding weight to mounting concerns that law has become a leader in management jargon.

As you can see below, the arrival at no-sourcing is the culmination of a slippery slope which has seen Susskind work his way through a range of increasingly extreme "-sourcing" derivatives.

Look out for Legal Cheek's review of Tomorrow's Lawyers later this week.

Meet Bowie Jane, an Australian "lawyer by day, pop singer by night" with a host of BBC radio gigs booked in the UK this year. Jane (pictured below) says she practises criminal law, but refuses to disclose which firm she works for or her real name...

When we contacted Jane, we got no more out of her on this topic than what was written on her website.

With the "super-woman" apparently getting over 100,000 visits to her MySpace page per month, and some of her YouTube videos attracting thousands of views, it seems improbable that she would be able to keep her double life as a lawyer totally secret.

Yet Jane maintains that she has managed to do so, insisting that work colleagues are unaware of her popstar antics – despite performing a high-profile gig at the Australian Open Tennis Championships last year.

Having apparently chosen law in an attempt to please her parents, Jane says the plan down the line is to ditch her legal career and do the music full-time. "I really want to do just the singing, but I can’t afford to at the moment," she said.

Encouragingly in this respect, Jane's Twitter follower count has spiralled over recent months. However, doubts remain about the Aussie songstress' ability to monetize the loyalty of aficionados like "Fresco Sharalyn" and "Unice Shareown" (pictured below) – a type of which she boasts a notable percentage.

Single? Enjoy law so much that you'd prefer your next partner to be a lawyer like you? In which case why not pop along to our Valentine's Day speed dating night for lawyers...

Hosted by Legal Cheek editorial duo Alex Aldridge and Lucy Pether, the evening at The Fox pub between Moorgate and Old Street, central London, will bring together the cream of the not-yet-taken legal profession to (hopefully) spawn a wave of new lawyer-power couples.

If you're a solicitor/barrister/legal executive/law student/other legal professional and you'd like to attend, please email events@legalcheek.com to reserve your place, quoting 'Valentine's Day Lawyer Speed Dating' in the subject line. Tickets are £5 (payable on the night). The fun will commence next Thursday between 6:30-7pm.

The continent of Africa is made up of 54 sovereign states. However, only as recently as a few hours ago did global law firm DLA Piper recognise this...

Until it modified its website overnight following this post from US blog Above the Law, DLA had omitted to mention that its offices in the cities of Gaborone, Kampala, Kigali and Port Louis are in, respectively, Botswana, Uganda, Rwanda and Mauritius. Instead, the firm had opted to generically describe their country of location as "Africa" (see screenshot below of the DLA website before it was updated).

DLA's approach to detailing the location of its offices in other parts of the world has always been rather more precise.

Happily, though, everything is in order now.

On Tuesday I drew some angry responses when I tweeted: "Would actually love to see some of the flabby mid-market law firms go bust this year". How could I be so cold-hearted? Well...

The starting point is that many of the aforementioned outfits are hugely dysfunctional, with unsustainable business models which are reliant on perpetual economic boom. So it's a matter of time before they either go under or get swallowed up by another firm. Why not get it over with this year?

But what about the trainees and junior lawyers at those firms cast out into a difficult job market?

Firstly, as we have seen today with the news that DWF is to honour all Cobbetts' training contracts, this is no foregone conclusion (because trainees are relatively cheap to employ).

For the ones who are made redundant, getting another job will be hard. But not as hard as it would be if they had to do it a few years down the line when they are burdened by greater financial responsibilities.

Some will no doubt find themselves unable to get another legal role. But most of these outcasts won't be the legal geeks who really love the law. Rather, they'll be a members of the far bigger group who became lawyers because they didn't really know what else to do with their lives. And after a period of re-appraising their options, they'll find something else to do.

The greater concern is for the partners who get the chop. Because lots have big mortgages, privately-educated kids and trophy wives (and, in the minority of cases, husbands) with expensive tastes. Without an income in the hundreds of thousands of pounds — which they'll be very unlikely to match even if they find new jobs — they'll find that their lives change dramatically.

We're talking some unpleasant stuff here: home repossessions, kids being removed from their private schools, spouses moving on to other men who can provide them with the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

I feel sorry for these partners. But not to the extent that I think it's worth protecting the crumbling law firms where they work. They had a good run. Some of the partners were clever, recognised the good times wouldn't last forever and prepared themselves accordingly; others didn't.

Now they have to deal with the downside of the free market economics which for most of their lives has served them so well — and get out of the way to let the next cycle begin, unencumbered by the past.

One area of study that the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) is not believed to have considered is the learning of law through doctored clips of the 2004 film Downfall. A host of new legal education-themed spin-offs of the movie – which chronicles the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's reign of Nazi Germany in 1945 – have recently sprung up on YouTube, suggesting that Downfall-based law learning could be an area to watch in 2013...

The property law clip is a follow-up to this classic contract law tutorial.

Meanwhile, those already in practice may find this new document review role play instructive.

Last week a session at Grimsby Magistrates' Court was brought to a standstill when someone loudly farted in the public gallery...

Over to This Is Grimsby.

Thanks to Andrew Wilson (@pibarrister) for the tip.

"Dear @TheSunNewspaper. The Human Rights Act has nothing to do with the EU and the Court of Appeal is not an EU court!" wrote 1 Crown Office Row barrister Adam Wagner yesterday on Twitter.

He was responding to The Sun's "Inhuman Rights" story – which mangled a host of legal facts.

At which point, as Wagner's tweet was retweeted over 50 times, the legal profession's pent-up frustration with Britain's favourite red top began to spill forth in a glorious stream of anti-tabloid bile (some of which is pictured below)...

It continued overnight after Wagner, who juggles his barristerial duties with editing the UK Human Rights Blog, issued a post entitled "No, The Sun, the Human Rights Act is not the EU". It has already drawn a number of comments from lawyers lampooning the News International title.

As yet, no one from The Sun has been brave enough to issue a response.

From Baby Barristers: An opportunity has arisen for four commercial litigation paralegals to join a team of solicitors and barristers in a multi-million pound debt recovery project for a client bank.

Duties will include working on a full range of legal debt recovery tools, including all stages of litigation, from pre-action letters to enforcement. The position is based in London.

Candidates are required to have at least six months experience of legal debt recovery...

For details on how to apply, email jobs@babybarristers.co.uk, quoting 'Legal Cheek Job Alert' in the subject line.

Over the last few months I've received a number of emails from law graduates asking my view on unconventional ideas they've hatched in a bid to net training contracts and pupillages. Most involve some form of publicity stunt – which they hope will impress law firms so much that they'll bypass their usual HR procedures to offer them a job. In that respect, Lyndsey Jefferson's soon-to-be-embarked-upon tour of Scotland in search of a training contract is nothing new...

Still, I kind of like it. The tour's "from Wick to Wigtown" slogan is catchy. And Glasgow-based Jefferson's strategy of making contact with potential employers in advance via Twitter is a good one. So far, she has an impressive 48 meetings with lawyers lined up during the week-long road trip, which she departs upon next Monday.

The video which Jefferson has posted on YouTube explaining the rationale for the trip is also a good idea (even if the sound quality is poor, which is a shame).

The big question, of course, is will it work? And by that I mean not just land the Strathclyde law graduate some minimum wage paralegal gig that's worse than her current job working for a marketing agency, but get her an actual training contract.

If it does, expect a wave of copycat ventures on this side of the border. I'll be following Jefferson's progress on Twitter with interest.

As you'd expect, the inquiries Professor Richard Susskind encourages legal hopefuls to make in the 'Questions to Ask Employers' chapter of his new book, Tomorrow's Lawyers, are deeply prescient.

They include: "Do you have a long term strategy?", "Are you comforted by other firms' lack of progress?", "What are your preferred approaches to alternative sourcing?" and "Do you have an R&D capability?" Nowhere, though, is there advice on how a student can sound convincing while asking these things during an interview...

Of course, in the wake of Cobbetts' demise and the parlous financial state of a bunch of other big law firms, Susskind is right to urge lawyer hopefuls to look carefully at the state of the outfits they are considering joining. But the reality is that in this job market only those armed with an Oxbridge first can afford to be picky. And pissing off potential employers with smug-sounding questions is probably not going to help you get a foot in the door.

While not always great at dishing out practical advice, Susskind has got a very interesting take on the bigger picture. Back in his day, explains the fifty one year-old, people went into law not expecting to earn massive amounts and ended up making fortunes as the profession entered a 20 year boom. But for the last decade, he continues, they've been going into law for the money – and will end up earning far less than they hope.

Alright, this broad narrative of legal market decline is hardly new. But I've never heard it expressed in terms of avarice before – or considered the implication in the above example that the legal profession has been weakened by people attracted to it for the wrong reasons. It's in linking human motivations to wider forces driving change that Susskind is at his best.

Susskind details these forces as he romps through the well-worn tale of developments in culture and technology that are putting pressure on the mystique-reliant old law firm business model. As he does this, he zooms in on areas important to this narrative – like whether the market will continue to let lawyers bill for their time in an anti-competitive hourly rate way, and how educational barriers to entry for wannabe lawyers may erode.

Each time, Susskind comes down hard on the revolutionary side of the fence – fudging the odd critical detail as he goes. For example, what exactly is this new alternative to hourly billing that will fundamentally alter the dynamic between lawyers and their clients? But, hey, this is the future here. And predicting it requires a few leaps of faith.

As Tomorrow's Lawyers enters its closing chapters, the book strays increasingly from its business book starting point into the genre of sci-fi. In a final dystopian crescendo we discover that 2035 – the date on which Susskind targets his predictions – is a world with few barristers or solicitors; these once common specimens are now a precious elite.

Instead, through faceless office blocks roam "The Legal Knowledge Engineer", "The Legal Technologist", "The Legal Hybrid", "The Legal Process Analyst", "The Legal Project Manager", "The Online Dispute Resolution Practitioner", "The Legal Management Consultant" and "The Legal Risk Manager".

In what seems to be a last-gasp bid to tack on a happy-ending, Susskind insists that these jobs will "provide a rich and exciting new set of career opportunities for those who aspire to work in law". But although I happily swallowed everything the legal profession's favourite futurologist said up to this point, this final prediction feels like one leap of faith too far.

News came through overnight on Twitter that rapper Busta Rhymes closed yesterday's American Association For Justice (AAJ) conference. And sure enough this morning on YouTube was a freshly-posted video of Rhymes – whose nickname 'Busted' is a tribute to his extensive experience of the judicial process – serenading lawyers at said event...

"Any old lawyers? Any old attorneys? Any old powerful legal representation? Let me show you how to get you guys rollin'!" bellows Rhymes in the clip, before breaking into song.

Thanks to Clerksroom barrister Thomas Goodhead, who attended the conference, for the tip-off.

Anthony Lyons is a charming, intelligent part-time LPC student who works as a paralegal at top London law firm Mishcon de Reya. What's more, Lyons boasts an entrepreneurial zeal, organising the #AskaTrainee Twitter Q&A through his impressive social media following. In short, he's the sort of person who you'd expect to walk into a training contract – if, that is, he hadn't got a 2:2 in his degree...

Legal Cheek editor Alex Aldridge and Bircham Dyson Bell solicitor Kevin Poulter advise Lyons (pictured) on strategies for getting round this problem – and, in what may be a first for the #RoundMyKitchenTable podcast, agree!

The gist of their advice is for Lyons not to be fussy and to take a TC anywhere he can find one. Then, by the time he has finished it in 2015-2016, the economy will probably be in better shape and, as has happened after past recessions, there may even be a shortage of junior lawyers. In which case, there will be opportunities to trade up to better firms.

Listen to the trio chat in the podcast below. Plus, in the videoclip below that, Lyons reveals how he has built up an enviable Twitter presence through his @ParalegalTony account in a snappy two-minute smartphone interview which Aldridge forces him to submit as a condition to exiting Legal Cheek HQ.

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Recently a wave of university-wide "Spotted" pages have appeared on Facebook – enabling students to comment anonymously on fellow library and lecture hall users.

In the run-up to Valentine's Day, the posts on these pages have grown increasingly amorous. As you'd expect, with their natural beauty, brains and charm, law students have been generating plenty of interest...

Meanwhile, up the road at UCL...

Loath to miss out on the fun, students at the College of Law and BPP Law School have launched their own "Spotted" pages (located here and here) – although, to date, entries appear rather thin on the ground. Perhaps the "Spotted" trend doesn't work so well in the rather more conservative environment of vocational legal education.

Want to spot your own lawyer without messing around with anonymous posts on Facebook? Then come along to our lawyer speed dating evening tonight at 6:30pm at The Fox pub between Moorgate and Old Street, central London.

Ed note: This is the latest post in the 'If I knew then what I know now' series, where leading members of the legal profession share their wisdom with the next generation of wannabes.

If I knew then that you didn’t have to be a lawyer to enjoy law, I would have relaxed more into my studies than I did, writes legal academic and Leverhulme research fellow Professor John Flood. By my second year I was regretting having started law. I originally had desires to do the right thing, make sure everyone had access to justice, but law school doesn’t teach you that...

There were two events at law school that eventually changed my mind about law. The first was in Michael Zander’s English Legal System class. One Wednesday afternoon he asked us to go to a local police station and request the leaflets that were supposed to be handed to arrested people. Around 40 students hit the police stations of London, causing mayhem among them. Phone calls from the Home Office and Scotland Yard jammed the LSE switchboard. I loved it but some of my fellow students hated it.

The second was taking a class in anthropology of law. Law was taken out of the fusty courts into battles, food exchanges and Eskimo song contests. It opened my eyes. This stuff was real. I reinforced my choice not to be a lawyer by taking classes in Marxist theories of law, criminology, and legal theory, but not evidence or revenue.

But if I wasn’t going to be a lawyer, then what? My first thought was to put off deciding by taking an LLM. Warwick let me in to do research and I headed off to the Inns of Court to study barristers’ clerks. I became an anthropologist in Middle Temple, pitching my tent and observing this little known tribe. I followed them, I played football with them, and I drank with them. That last part led to some dark days, but I was happy.

I became a hybrid. One of my professors, William Twining, helped me go to the US to work at the American Bar Foundation (ABF). There was a wonderful mixture of social scientists and lawyers doing research on the legal profession, and they were being funded by the ABF. I combined this with doing a PhD in sociology with Howard Becker and Jack Heinz, which was a study of a corporate law firm. To do this I had to become a lawyer, as that was the only way to deal with lawyer-client privilege issues. Again, I pitched my tent and watched lawyers at work, how they talked with clients, how they billed their clients, and how they struggled for power inside the firm. It was a bit like having one’s own soap opera unfold before your eyes, only you have a role.

I think by this time I had realised I was an academic of sorts. But what sort? I wasn’t a "proper" legal academic; I was a sociologist but not many of them studied law and lawyers. I was clearly situated on the margins of whatever group I thought I belonged to. Although anxious I reconciled myself to this by understanding that if I played this the right way, I could more or less pursue my own ideas without much interference, and take charge of my life in a way that most people can’t do.

Finding myself at the University of Westminster close to legal London, I’ve continued researching the sociology of the legal profession. I’m omnivorous and study all lawyers, regardless of type. And I added globalisation to my interests on the basis that law didn’t appear to be globalising in the same way as finance, yet English and American lawyers were spreading their law firms and their legal institutions around the world. The key thing about my research is that it is empirical. When I want to know something about lawyers I ask them.

I have researched large law firms, lawyer-client relationships, ethics, the globalisation of insolvency, and I’ve been back to re-study barristers' clerks. They have changed a lot since my first time, but underneath I’m surprised by how much hasn’t changed. As an empirical researcher, I need funds to travel, to transcribe recordings and so on. I spend time applying for research grants, or I’m commissioned to do research. For example, both the Law Society and the Bar Council have asked me to do research for them. I have only one condition: I must be able to publish the results.

Now, I have a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for two years which is to study the new legal services market post-Legal Services Act 2007. This has brought me into contact with the Legal Services Board on whose Research Strategy Group I sit. I recently completed a project for them, with Morten Hviid of UEA, on the role of the cab rank rule.

Another of my teachers once said to me good research always upsets the status quo. Why not? It’s enjoyable and could achieve some good, which is where I started out.

John Flood is professor of law and sociology at the University of Westminster and Leverhulme research fellow. He blogs at John Flood’s Random Academic Thoughts (RATs).

Last night we held our inaugural lawyer speed dating night amid the candlelit splendour of The Fox pub in Shoreditch...

Accustomed to working in six minute blocks of time, the attendees took to the format with ease, delighting one another with tales from the world of law.

As the chat flowed fascinatingly from document review to e-disclosure, chemistry levels soared.

Unsurprisingly, by the end of the evening a host of matches had been made – much to the delight of Legal Cheek's Lucy Pether, the brains behind the event.

The next Legal Cheek lawyer speed dating evening will run in March – more information to follow later this month...

"She knows she left at 6.30am. She knows that because she went to Pret, which does not open until then."

Cloisters barrister David Massarella elaborates on the suggestion that Travers Smith partner Helen Croke was "very critical" of his client, ex-Travers trainee Katie Tantum, after she worked through the night on a transaction, but left at around 6.30am because she felt unwell.

Tantum claims she was rejected for an NQ job because she was pregnant. Her sex discrimination hearing against Travers Smith continues today.

There's late and there's taking the piss. The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) final report, which the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) announced today will not be published before May, arguably falls into the latter category...

The SRA's statement, released around midday, reads:

"Good progress is being made by the research team in their work to ensure that the range and depth of the data collected through extensive engagement with stakeholders is fully reflected in their final report.

"The report is not now expected to be submitted to the three sponsoring regulators­ - Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Bar Standards Board (BSB), and ILEX Professional Standards (IPS) - before May 2013, following which it will be published.

The sponsoring regulators support the research team's view that it is important to ensure that the data is fully reflected in the report, even though that means a delay in its finalisation."

Looks like the draft LETR report submitted before Christmas didn't go down so well...

If you're not familiar with the 'Harlem Shake', fear not: all you really need to know is that it’s the latest internet sensation à la Gangnam Style. And something to do with an eighties dance move, a song currently in the charts, and a follow-up viral video featuring four masked men dancing wildly. People have gone nuts for it, with thousands of videos popping up all over the web since the beginning of the month, starring everyone from the Norwegian Army to Cambridge University students (see below).

As yet there are no UK law student or lawyer Harlem Shake videos, but several US law schools have created their own versions. This courtroom-based performance from Florida State University Law School is my favourite...

Cornell Law School's effort is also worthy of mention.

With the above for inspiration, it's surely a matter of time before Britain's law students come up with their own Harlem Shakes. Expect the country's solicitors and barristers to follow soon after, guided, perhaps, by the choreography in this magnificent Harlem Shake office clip.

How many of the films can you name in this freshly-posted law film medley from Bloomberg Law?