When people ask me what I do, what I actually get out of bed for every morning, I generally say that I'm a journalist.

Occasionally, in mixed company (i.e. not pretty girls) I'll preface that with, "well, I used to be a lawyer. A really crap one". But mostly, I claim I'm a journalist. I say 'claim', because - realistically - I'm not convinced churning out a couple of 200 word stories for RollOnFriday really counts as journalism. Tittle-tattle, maybe. Thrusting gossip from the soft underbelly of the legal world. Ten million tawdry stories from the naked City. Something like that. Journalism? Hmm.

But every now and again, I do a little bit of what the man on the Clapham omnibus might think of as proper journalism: a teensy bit of research. I'm not saying that happens every week. I don't want to pour through LLP accounts. I don't want to write about partner Y moving from firm X to Z. I care not a jot for developments in Latvian litigation. But just occasionally, there's a story which warrants a bit of care and attention.

So it was with the strange and lonely case of Nathan "Andrew" Iyer. Once a proud Ince & Co partner - and part-time vanity published novelist - Iyer was today struck from the profession, his name expunged from the records - after an alleged £3 million fraud. I say alleged, but according to real journalists he's admitted all the false accounting and so on required. And is now bankrupt as a result of attempting to pay it all back. Iyer's profile on Amazon says he's a "high profile and successful City lawyer". Well, one out of two ain't bad.

Keen to find out more, just in case it was exciting and racy, we (well Laura@RoF) attempted to get our grubby hands on the transcript. Clearly, neither of us was going to sit through a tribunal hearing in an airless box in Farringdon, we just wanted a record of what was said. Presumably that would be easy to get hold of, right? No. It takes seven weeks. Seven weeks. Are they hand-written on vellum? Etched in granite? So for all the grisly details, try The Lawyer. Maybe I'll have a read at the end of March.

But at least Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has acted. With panther-like speed, it has pounced on Iyer. And thrown him out of the profession. The ultimate sanction; pats on the back all round. The City of London police are working over the files now. They like to take their time.

Iyer's particular case came to light almost two years ago, and it turns out he started his scam when he was an associate. I'm all for due process and the SDT getting its ducks in order - and it's clearly been a busy, busy time for dodgy solicitors - but the treacle-like pace of legal governance is quite extraordinary. And it's not just the regulators who need a kick up the arse.

Christopher "HogLove" Grierson took four years to amass his alleged £1million. Well done to the person who finally stuck a head above the parapet and dobbed in him - but where was everyone in the three years before, when he was nicking £5k EVERY WEEK? The compliance department must have been like Pompeii.

It must be something to do with the law. During Paul "double cvnt" Dacre's testimony at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday, there were a couple of pauses in proceedings for the shorthand person to take a break. Lest we forget, the entire enquiry is being streamed across the internet, recorded for posterity. Ben Goldacre (a proper polymath journalist and doctor) called it "top legal retrofetishism."

What on earth is going on? What is it about the legal world which makes everything behind the scenes run like treacle? It's odd, given every law firm prides itself on the ruthless efficiency of its deal-making, its grinding of associates into putty to get transactions done in double-quick time. And yet, in the background, change is cripplingly, heartbreakingly slow. Maybe because the lawyers are still in charge, still running their own businesses. The sort of gentlemen amateurs who think that management consultancy and human resources is all a bit "trade", all a bit non-U. And then wonder why Grierson, Iyer and many, many more besides, have had their hands in the till for years. Allegedly.