The Law Society's 150th anniversary law week celebration ends with a fund-raising benefit at the Duke of York's theatre, to support the work of Justice and Amnesty International.

This is very apt, first because Justice and Amnesty share a founder, Peter Benenson, who was Amnesty's joint honorary secretary in 1961 and one of the all-party group of lawyers who set up Justice in 1957.

Secondly, it also marks, for Justice, a year which has been an important turning-point in our 38-year history.The most tangible sign of this is our new building: four floors of office space, as compared to 700 cramped square feet.

The success of our appeal, launched two-and-a-half years ago, has allowed us to acquire our own home, and to take on more staff and volunteers.

We are within £200,000 of our target, thanks largely to generous support within the legal profession.This year is also an important one for our work.

For over 30 years Justice has been the only organisation specialising in miscarriages of justice, looking at 600 cases a year; 100 of them in detail.

Some cases go directly to appeal and, because of the Court of Appeal's more flexible approach, are now much more likely to be successful.

However, where rights of appeal are exhausted, the only route to review is by way of a petiti on to the home secretary.

This is an extremely unsatisfactory process, characterised by slowness, secrecy and a reluctance to interfere with the decisions of the courts.Two major steps forward have been made over the past year.

First, the decision in the Divisional Court in Ex p.

Hickey (including one Justice case) established that unsuccessful applicants should normally be able to see the evidence collected by the police or the Home Office.

Prior to that, it was common for a thick dossier of evidence to be turned down in a one or two-page letter, without the possibility of examining or challenging the facts behind the refusal.Secondly, a Bill to establish an independent criminal cases review commission is now going through Parliament.

Justice's detailed research report, 'Remedying miscarriages of justice', set out our blueprint for the new body.

Some of this has been incorporated into the Bill; other recommendations, such as the need for an investigatory power independent of the police, are still being debated.This combination of policy research and litigation will increasingly underpin Justice's work.

With three in-house solicitors, we are able to undertake our own litigation before the Court of Appeal, at judicial review and in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Later this year, the ECHR will hear a case (unanimously declared admissible by the Commission) which challenges the home secretary's power to decide when and whether to release juveniles sentenced to indeterminate periods of imprisonment.

Parallel to this, a Justice working party - including lawyers and childcare specialists - is working on proposals for reform of the law and procedures for dealing with serious juvenile offenders, including the age of criminal responsibility.Disclosure and admissibility of evidence will be the next major issue in criminal justice, with the publication of the Scott report on the limits of public interest immunity, and the publication of a government green paper prior to legislation this autumn.

Justice's annual conference, on 1 July in the Law Society's Hall, will bring together some key participants to debate these matters.

Lord Justice Scott will open the conference; other speakers include professor Andrew Ashworth, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Mr Justice Hooper, Assistant Chief Constable Ian Blair, and Professor Cornelius Nestler from Germany, where a similar debate is taking place and has resulted in changes to the German constitution.But criminal justice is only part of Justice's work.

This year we have launched an ambitious human rights programme.

It includes presenting evidence on the UK government's report on its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

It also includes setting up a committee of experts to look at inter-governmental co-operation in home affairs and justice matters within the EU.

In a submission to the House of Lords, Justice presented a critique of the democratic and judicial accountability of Europol, the Europe-wide police data-gathering body.

We are now preparing a report on identity cards and working on submissions for the 1996 EU inter-governmental conference.The interaction between domestic, European and human rights law provides new opportunities for public interest litigation.

A Justice working party, chaired by Mr Justice Laws, will soon report and make recommendations on the use of third party interventions in such cases.And, finally, there is the crucial question of access to justice.

Changes in legal aid provision and impatience with slow, expensive court-b ased procedures is leading to a search for more effective ways of delivering justice to individuals.

Justice has a long record of proposing reforms in civil procedures and alternative methods of dispute resolution (such as the ombudsmen).

Our chairman, Lord Alexander, recently urged that lawyers be trained as problem-solvers, not simply litigators.

Managing those changes and striking the right balance between efficiency and fairness will be a key task for the profession, and for Justice.So, for us, 1995 marks some significant steps forward.

The appeal will give us a firm base.

But we need to increase our membership, particularly among solicitors, to provide a core income and to ensure that we can reflect the views of a wide cross-section of the profession.

If you would like details of our membership or activities, please contact us at 59 Carter Lane, London EC4V 5AQ, DX 323.