The President reported that his members blamed the Law Society for the loss of scale fees for conveyancing.

Members were cutting each other's throats with the average fee for a house sale falling to about £150.

The legal aid fund had run dry and was £20 million in deficit.

In response the law society was proposing to withdraw legal aid from non matrimonial civil cases.

The members in question practise near the Arctic Circle and the law society administers legal aid in Ontario.Three thousand delegates from 96 countries came to Melbourne to compare notes of this sort.

Nearly 400 lawyers from England and Wales looks impressive compared with the number who attend their national conference.

More significant perhaps was that 40 Finnish lawyers, mainly from rural practices came to learn about how to cope with the demands of a changing professional environment.There were formidable lessons provided by the host country.

In a most impressive research paper Ronwyn North, a solicitor, and Peter North MBA offered a unique insight into professional negligence exposure in the Australian legal profession.They had looked at five years of claims affecting 6000 legal firms.

They had carried out in-depth interviews with a representative sample of solicitors who had been subject to a claim.

They identified five underlying causes of all claims, together with three contributory factors.The biggest single cause was the basic professional attitude of the solicitors involved, rather than their ability as lawyers.

They called the process 'engagement management' with five ingredients which included setting up the engagement, managing the client's expectations, varying the terms of engagement, writing to clients and closing the engagement properly.The other four causes also have a familiar ring.

The failure to identify the legal issues at stake, or to devise a strategy with the client to tackle the job, was high on the list.

So also were failures to listen, ask or explain actions coupled with a lack of humility in explaining to the client that the job was beyond that particular lawyer.More worryingly, lawyers in teams often tended to be dominated by particular individuals and did not take an overall view.

Insurers had settled many cases, merely because the lawyer had failed to leave a 'useable trail' showing what he had done and why he had done it.The contributory factors identified were perhaps no less unsurprising.

The practice style of the lawyer was highly influential.Three hazardous types were identified.

The 'can do lawyer' who did not stop to think and too easily threw in damaging non-legal advice; the 'too busy lawyer' who was disorganised, took on too much work and never finished any jo b properly.

But, the 'very careful lawyer' could also be a problem because of the failure to delegate matters so that there was no opportunity for another person, even a support staff member, to spot things which the lawyer had missed.The client was a huge contributory factor, especially the type of client who shifts the goal posts, has a history of different solicitors or is virtually a professional claimant.Very significantly, there were higher and more frequent losses in firms big and small who did not have procedures to reduce the risk of making mistakes or for spotting them.The outcome of this study is a very ambitious risk management programme ranging from a special enquiry into the very survival of small legal practices to counselling for firms with bad records.

Formal codes of engagement are being introduced and other measures adopted which, if not followed by lawyers will result in loss of cover or higher deductibles.The authors firmly conclude that a mutual indemnity fund is far superior to a commercial one because only such a fund is capable of introducing the incentives and the measures needed to improve standards of professional practice leading to higher profit.Another universal problem discussed was the role of law societies in promoting their members' interests to the public or to parliament.

There was a depressing catalogue of failure of corporate advertising programmes either to enhance the image of lawyers or to produce any increase in the volume of work reaching those lawyers.A massive advertising campaign in South Africa was suspended because of the sheer cost of repeating the message.

In Sweden, the only discernible effect had been an increase in the number of complaints.

In Holland an attempt to bring more work from small businesses promoted through an advertising campaign had similarly failed to show demonstrable gains.There is a growing understanding, at least outside England and Wales that it is a firm's own efforts and reputation that determine the amount of its work and reputation rather than generalised campaigns by professional bodies.We heard that large firms in Scotland in particular had rebelled against the idea of using their money to promote other firms.

Instead they and much smaller firms had decided to use their limited resources on marketing themselves.The meeting provided a forum for discussion on legal education.

The new legal practice and professional skills courses in England and Wales were admired as the most comprehensive response to the challenges of modern practice.