The formal opening of the legal year (OLY) gives the profession an opportunity to reflect on the fundamental principles of access to justice and the rule of law. For the Law Society, it is not only a time to rededicate ourselves to those principles, but a time to pause, reflect and consider what the future holds.

While London remains one of the world’s premier financial and legal centres, growth in recent years has been sluggish, reflecting the pedestrian performance of the UK economy. By contrast the sustained economic growth of the home nations of many of the OLY audience reaffirms my belief that one challenge for bar leaders in the globalising world this year is to help our respective members evolve in a way that maintains all that is good about their distinct identities, while continuing to meet the needs of ever more demanding, internationally focused and sophisticated clients.

The opening of the legal year is also the showpiece event in the domestic legal calendar. We are all too aware of the changes the profession is facing. At such times the role of the Law Society assumes even greater importance. We are working very hard to ensure that the entire membership fully understand how these changes will affect them, and how they can continue to thrive in the new legal services market.

I am confident that there will always be room in both the consumer and the corporate law markets for firms of all sizes, but only if they have a clear strategy, are efficiently run, and understand and adapt to the changing needs and expectations of clients.We will continue to do our upmost to promote the Conveyancing Quality Scheme, designed to raise standards, improve the client experience and make it easier for all practices to secure their position on lender panels and obtain competitive professional indemnity insurance.

We will also continue to oppose government proposals to cut legal aid and implement the Jackson reforms by continuing to advocate more realistic and achievable efficiencies in the justice system. But whatever the conclusion of the parliamentary process, the Law Society is determined to continue to give the very best support to our members who practise legal aid, to ensure that those genuinely in need of legal advice or representation are not abandoned.

Access all areas

One of my great passions and one of my priorities as president is to work towards fostering fairer access to the profession. My innate sense of fairness as a lawyer is affronted by the idea that there are able and committed students currently studying who, without means or family experiences or expectations of higher education, face unreasonable and unfair hurdles to becoming a lawyer.

While our profession has, on many parameters, never been more diverse, we all know that many able but socially disadvantaged people find fewer ladders leading them to high achievement than was the case a generation ago.No profession or representative body can eliminate the inequalities of opportunity in our society alone, but the Law Society and the wider profession can and should work together to promote and support interventions at a profession-wide, firm and individual level to ensure that the brightest students can become solicitors if they wish.

Many of you will have read or heard me say that I am a rational optimist - and I am. I face the future with a sense of optimism for our profession, for the values that it represents and espouses, for the services that it provides to society, and for its future health, independence and prosperity. It is true that in this year, above all, it feels as though everything is changing. But in another sense nothing will change as the Law Society strives to do its upmost to serve law and justice, and promote the interests of the profession and our clients.

Passage to India

I have just returned from accompanying the justice secretary to India. As part of a delegation, along with the Bar Council, I returned full of optimism about the potential for progress in the liberalisation of the Indian legal market. We met law and justice minister Salman Khurshid, and Bar Council of India chair Ashok Parija, our natural counterpart. I am pleased to report that all our discussions were extremely productive, positive and forward-thinking.

On the basis of these discussions I look forward to the partnership between the Law Society and Bar Council of India that will no doubt develop in the future. A positive result of our discussions would have many benefits for all solicitors in England and Wales who are looking for opportunities to serve overseas clients whatever their size or location. This is particularly true for England and Wales, which have many close and personal links with India and may benefit from better access and increased cooperation between our two jurisdictions.

If the Indian legal services market can emulate the success of Indian businesses which are becoming global enterprises, then the opportunities are enormous. There is no reason why Indian law firms should not achieve that success; the quality of people leading Indian firms is exceptional and I have every reason to suppose they could be at the forefront of a transformation in India, just as we have seen in international legal centres such as London and New York.

Despite some over-enthusiastic headlines in the Hindustan Times and the Wall Street Journal no formal agreement was reached, but I am happy to report that we did agree with our Indian colleagues that it was important to develop a timetable, with milestones on the way towards greater access to India’s legal services market. This process would help deliver the sort of joined-up and international advice that globalised businesses expect from legal professionals and the legal services market.

John Wotton is president of the Law Society