It is a great honour to lead a learned profession.

This week, the Council chose its nomination for Deputy Vice-President.

My congratulations go to Henry Hodge.

He should follow two great solicitors, Charles Elly and John Young, to the presidency.

Both Charles and John are giving me enormous support in my year.

Where are we going to be allowed to lead this great profession? I wish I knew!It has been my goal to lead a profession of objectively competent lawyers who are well respected by the community that they serve.

They should be free of unnecessary regulation and restrictive practices and be fairly remunerated for the work they do.

Whether they be from a major City firm or a sole practitioner, the government should support them, safe in the knowledge that they put justice before self-interest.

The profession wants to be composed of the best, irrespective of class, wealth race, colour or creed.I have just returned from China, leading a delegation, together with Robert Seabrook QC, Chairman of the Bar, of superb commercial lawyers.

They demonstrated what is great about the English and Welsh legal profession.

China has an embryonic legal profession supported by its government.

There are currently 70,000 lawyers with a goal of one million within a few years.

It was stimulating, but put into focus much of what I want to achieve for our profession.I am three-quarters of the way through my year.

A year is not long enough to come close to achieving what I had hoped.

It would, however, be impossible for most Presidents to stay for longer, even if they wished, for they would then never return to their practices.What I have managed to do, however, is visit many law societies and law firms.

The overwhelming majority demonstrate what is good in our profession.

What, then, is going wrong? I do believe many of our problems can be attributed to the blindness, insensitivity, arrogance and the Treasury-driven short-termism of this government.

We must be sure, however, that we do identify whether any of the problems are self-induced and, if so, rectify them.Last week, on my birthday, was published a report which, in part, I have described as shocking.

It was a report which was commissioned by the research and policy planning unit of the Law Society and undertaken by researchers of the prestigious Policy Studies Institute.

The whole report is very well worth reading.

Regrettably, the report found that there was direct discrimination when ethnic minority students were attempting to obtain training contracts.I have made my abhorrence of discrimination clear; so has the Council of the Law Society.

The Council, without the benefit of this report, had already shown its determination to stamp out discrimination by passing overwhelmingly practice rules and targets for the employment of ethnic minorities.

Firms large and small must treat all their training applicants equally.

I do not want to hear again the comment: 'My clients would not be prepared to be seen by a black/Asian solicitor.' This says more about the firm than the client.

This attitude must not be supported or condoned.By far the greater ill is the fact that the government is ensuring that trainees, be they black or white, are only likely to last the course if they come from an affluent middle class background.

The problem of student debt has been warned about by the vice-chancellors of our universities, and now our research has proved that those wa rnings were correct.Many so-called working class students and ethnic minorities would wish to work in under-privileged areas.

As a number of my letters show, it is, of course, these practices that are being starved of income, so making it impossible for them to take on trainees.Despite the above, I am glad to say that 508 ethnic minority solicitors were admitted in 1992/93, which was 12.5% of solicitors admitted in that year, compared with 8% in 1988/89.The largest increase has been in the number of Chinese lawyers admitted to the profession, which brings me back to my visit to China.Major firms from time to time may feel that most of the problems I face have more relevance to the legal aid firms than to them.

This is not true.

Part of my job is to sell the English and Welsh legal profession to the rest of the commercial world, and I take that part of my role very seriously.Before going to China, I spent time with the World Bank in Washington, I visited Hong Kong several times, I met with major commercial firms and concerns which have a presence in China, and with the legal profession in China.

I spent some time with Chris Patten, I talked to Chinese leaders here and in Hong Kong and had the skilled advice and help of Dr Karen Brewer of the international department of the Law Society, who accompanied me to China.

We have, of course, trained nearly 60 Chinese lawyers in England over the last few years, and we met with a number of them whilst in China who now occupy senior positions.Once in China, time and again the point was made to us that the English government was putting little into China.

I have given much attention to the politics of Hong Kong, but government's imperial attitude there must not make them blind to a nation of 1.1 billion whose second language is English, who have a very rapidly expanding market economy, and where out of currently 2000 joint ventures in the Shanghai region, the English have less than ten.

The Chinese have 3000 years' experience of trade, and our government's arrogance and insensitivity is seriously affecting our ability for English lawyers to be involved in their colossal expansion.I started this reflection with leadership.

I wish to lead a strong, independent profession.

I want a government which recognizes our value and works with us to provide a full and competent service to the under-privileged and the commercial community equally.I see no sign that this is their will, and certainly no member of the cabinet seems to be a champion of these causes.