Gerald Jones is right to call on the Law Society Council to apply greater rigour to decisions such as the one taken recently in respect of referral fees (see [2004] Gazette, 29 January, 15).

This was a disgraceful episode.

The matter was raised without proper advance paperwork.

The procedural motion 'that the motion be put' was proposed at a point at which 11 members were still down to speak.

The 11 included lay members, none of whom had yet spoken.

In those circumstances, the council's standing orders left the president with no choice.

Those pushing for referral fees won the substantive vote by a small majority.

In other words, the council was bounced.

By such squalid means does a once proud profession end up agreeing to the buying and selling of clients - and, of course, those most likely to be exploited by these arrange-ments are those who are most disadvantaged.

It is fervently to be hoped that the Clementi review and the council's own governance review will together ensure that this dysfunctional structure - which exists principally to ensure breadth of representation of the profession - no longer also has responsibility for regulating it in the public interest.

Steven Burkeman, lay Law Society Council member, York

Response: The Law Society Council has considered the rules relating to payments for referrals on several occasions over recent years.

It considered a full paper on the subject last October, when it decided to reject two options for relaxation of the rule put forward by the standards board.

A council member brought forward a motion to the December 2003 meeting, proposing a variation of one of the options considered in October, so as to require the introducer to inform the client of the referral arrangement, and to prohibit the payment of referral fees for legal aid work.

The issues having been fully canvassed in the papers for the October meeting, there was no need for them to be rehearsed once again in the December meeting.

After a long debate, a council member moved that the motion be put - and the council supported that motion.

All organisations need some means of limiting the time taken for debate on an individual issue in order to ensure they can get through their business as a whole.

I recognise that there is some concern on the council about the way in which our procedures currently deal with the termination of debates.

The council will be invited to consider at its February meeting how it wants to deal with these issues in future.

Peter Williamson, Law Society President, London