Another example of lawyers undermining their own raison d’etre: planning and Building Regulations.
Instead of finding out the facts and applying the law to them, to decide whether (in a recent example) a detached garage needed planning permission or Building Regiulations consent – in the particular circumstances, it needed neither – the conveyancer acting for the buyer of the property insisted that I write to the local authority, to ask them to confirm the law!
Talk about making oneself redundant!!