I have been asked by Martin Mears to be Secretary of the Presidential Reformed Group.

This is the group of Council members who have declared support for him and the Vice-President, Robert Sayer.

I am happy to accept.

Why?It goes back to basics.

The Law Society had become out of touch with the realities and problems of the4e profession as a whole.

There was a great gap between what solicitors needed and what was being debated and passed in Chancery Lane.

There was an urgent need to narrow that gap.These views are not new and are shared by many Council members.

Indeed, the Society's own surveys confirm that many practitioners hold this perception of the Law Society.

However, little was being done to tackle the problems.

Last year's roadshows were a start but they did nothing to change the culture in Chancery Lane.A more fundamental change was required to make the Law Society more representative and democratically answerable to its membership.

There could be no more dramatic first step towards this than Mr Mears and Mr Sayer's election to the office of President and Vice-President.

However, the change must go further.Change can be painful.

Increasing the democratic nature of the law Society's Council is likely to involve replacing the nominated Council seats with elected ones.

This will hardly be welcome to Council members already giving much time voluntarily to the Society.

But, if one is claiming that a democratic organisation is unrepresentative, this is surely the correct and legitimate approach.The change required is also about the elected representatives having greater control over what goes on in Chancery Lane.

Again, this is not a new concept.

Previous Presidents have expressed this view.

An unfortunate side effect of increasing this control is the loss of some long-serving senior members of staff.

Regretfully, in any large organisation where there is a fundamental change of direction, this has to be expected.

However, a new Secretary-General is now in place and the opportunity exists to re-establish the confidence and morale that the recent changes may have dented.The change required is also about setting an agenda which is more in tune with the profession itself.

This has drawn criticism.

There have been attacks on Mr Sayer's attempts to resolve the conveyancing problem.

He will say that he feels thwarted by an unsupportive Council -- but at least he is doing what he can with the backing of the profession as a whole.Compare this with last year when the Council was pressing ahead with separate representation against the result of a consultation clearly indicating that three-quarters of the profession was against it.It is easy to dismiss 'listening to the profession' as mere populism.

Some older Council members comment that solicitors 'do not understand the real issues'.

To me, such comments betray an arrogant and cynical dismissal of the opinions of solicitors and indicate a lack of trust of the profession that the Council is meant to be representing.The Presidential Reform Group is not hear to bring party politics to the Law Society, nor does it herald the beginning of the end.

The group does not advocate impeaching the Counsel nor splitting the Society's regulatory and representative roles.

Its purpose is to support Mr Mears and Mr Sayer in their attempt fundamentally to change the outlook and approach of the Society.Far from wanting to destroy the Law Society, the group's aim is to strengthen it.