Desmond Hudson explains how the Law Society is allocating its resources to hone the way it develops and delivers services to solicitors


The Law Society was already in the midst of a programme of fundamental change when I arrived last September. The separation of its work representing solicitors from its regulation and complaints-handling responsibilities had been put into effect at the beginning of the year.



Since then, the Law Society Council had been considering what that change meant for its representative function. It had commissioned a survey of members in which 19,000 responded, and it had settled the new scope and purpose of the organisation.

My task has been to put the flesh on those bones and to begin to define the products and services that solicitors rightly expect their professional body to provide. I have been looking closely at the resources we have available to support the delivery of those products and services, and at what changes might be needed to make sure that we are in the best possible position to meet our members' expectations.



My overarching objectives are to:

l Deliver a modern and responsive professional body;

l Establish the organisational, governance, resourcing and management structures to underpin representational activities;

l Establish a financial basis that is sustainable over the medium term;

l Identify a series of activities and services that meet the needs of all parts of the Law Society's membership; and

l Activate new or expanded services and activities on the basis of viable business plans.



I have been working closely with the elected leaders of the Law Society to define each of those objectives in more detail, and staff members across the Society have been working over the last two months to develop business plans that take us forward.



Some of our new ideas will be reasonably quick to implement and others will take time to prepare for launch. But all of our activities will be subject to frequent evaluation to make sure that they are working for our members. If they are not working, we will cut them and if demand is greater than expected, we will allocate extra resources.



Change on this scale always creates some difficult choices and one of the key decisions I had to make was where to invest the Law Society's resources.



Everything we do needs to contribute to our mission of supporting solicitors. That means making sure that all of our support services are delivered as efficiently as possible, so that we can maximise the financial and human resources that are working directly on developing and delivering services to solicitors.



I have begun a consultation with 38 staff who have been placed at risk of redundancy as part of the drive to deliver greater efficiency. There has been a recruitment freeze in place at the Law Society for more than a year in anticipation of these changes, so some of those 38 will be able to find alternative employment within the organisation, but I still expect between 21 and 29 staff members to leave as a result of these changes.



This is only the beginning of change. We will be keeping a close watch on the success of all that we do and making adjustments as we advance.



We want to move forward together with our members. There are more and more ways to engage with the work of the Law Society - becoming a committee member is now no longer the only way to influence and shape our work. Visit the Society's website for opportunities to get involved, sign up for newsletters, and help us keep solicitors in touch with their representative body.



Desmond Hudson is the chief executive of Law Society Representation