Membership services have been 'desperately neglected', according to Assistant Secretary-General Geoff Bignell, even though the Law Society was originally founded to offer benefits to those who joined.

'Social activities, information, sometimes complaints handling, sometimes training courses - these were fundamental,' he says.A professional institution exists for four core purposes, says Mr Bignell, who on 1 August will take the reins of the Society's Directorate of Members Services: to represent the interests of members to opinion formers, government, the media and the world at large; to control entry to the profession; to set standards of ethics and exercise discipline when these are transgressed; and to provide services for its members.

'In recent years, all the expansion has been in regulation and compliance,' Mr Bignell says.

'No wonder people identify the Law Society as purely a regulatory body.'Other professional bodies separate the regulatory and services sides.

Mr Bignell cites the example of the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association.

'We combine the two, and it's easy for priorities to be perceived as distorted.' The fact that no committee has been responsible for membership services is an indication of how little importance has been attached to them.

Membership subscriptions were abolished in 1990.

With the benefit of hindsight, one wonders whether that move was sensible, Mr Bignell says.

If members paid separately for services, the Society would have to give them a higher priority and co-ord inate their marketing.'Forty years ago a membership subscription (£4 a year) cost more than the practising certificate (five guineas for town members, £3.13.6d for country members).

For that they got the Gazette, the library and they could use the catering.

Now people don't know what we provide.'A review of small firms carried out last year by the Society confirmed that, aside from the Gazette, the library and ethics advice and support, members were largely unaware of the range of services available.

(But solicitors who did take advantage of what was on offer, the survey also showed, were on the whole very pleased with the service they received.) That is the purpose of the membership services brochure which will be distributed with the Guardian Gazette on 24 May.

'We hope it will act as an aide memoire,' says Mr Bignell, 'to inform members both about the range of services and how to get access to them.' Mr Bignell acknowledges a difficulty which he intends to address.

'Where we provide free services - for instance our enquiry lines - we tend to get swamped.

We haven't had the resources to make sure we could answer the phones all the time.

It is part of my game plan to improve the profile and the resources of these services.

We have already taken on additional temporary staff in ethics, for example.'Not only may members be unaware of certain services, they may also not realise their scope.

The library for instance houses a comprehensive reference collection of professional textbooks, law reports, primary and secondary legislation, including superseded material.

The jurisdiction covered is principally UK and European Union, but there are also sections on Scottish and Irish law as well as other UK jurisdictions.

Also on offer is an enquiry service, which deals with more than 40,000 enquiries every year, and services making extensive use of new technology, including in-house databases, on-line and CD-ROM services.

The library, with Lynn Quiney at its head, also manages a valuable historical collection.The Law Society offers services to its members at all stages of their careers, including retirement.

SSPF, set up more than 60 years ago, provides pensions for firms, partners and staff, runs the profession's money-purchase pension scheme, with more than 5000 members and funds valued at more than £100 million, and an industry-wide final salary scheme.

A subsidiary company, SSPF Personal Pensions Ltd, in collaboration with Winterthur Life, also offers a tailored personal plan.All solicitors' firms - including sole practitioners - can take advantage of the health care plan administered by Health Care Management.

The company's function, says Nora Griffith, is 'to manage the cost of claims with the underlying philosophy that it should not be passed on to the claimant'.

Members of the scheme have access via a helpline number to a dedicated team of helpdesk staff.

A major benefit of the scheme is the direct settlement process, which means that a member undergoing in-patient treatment does not have to worry about payment.Other financial products are offered to members under the banner of Solicitors Financial Services, which uses the profession's bulk buying power to secure advantageous terms.

These include policies for motor, household, office, private medical and personal accident insurance, as well as personal loans for domestic and office purposes.

SFS also oversees the credit card scheme, which holds the attraction of no annual fee and a lower-than-usual interest rate.Another money saver is the free hotel bookings service opera ted by Priority Hotel Reservations plc.

Since its launch last July, nearly 3000 members have subscribed to the scheme, by which hotels for both business and personal use may be booked at reduced rates, via a telephone hotline.

Reservations are confirmed in writing both to you and to the hotel.

Conferences, courses, social events and seminars can all be organised by the conference office, which takes care of every detail from venue bookings to national flags for delegates at international meetings.The biggest event undertaken by the conference office is the solicitors' annual conference.

It also regularly organises the conferences of presidents and secretaries of local law societies and activities for Law Society as well as outside groups.

'We will do anything if asked, although our work tends to be in the legal area, because that is where our contacts are,' says Pru Ross, who heads the conference office team.

'We don't charge out commercially because members are already paying for us through their subscriptions.

But if an event is not for the whole membership, we expect our overheads to be covered.'Members can organise their own conferences and social occasions, even weddings, with the help of the banqueting and functions centre, headed by general manager John Lotinga.

Law Society Hall's grandest venues include the common room with its Persian enamel friezes and stained glass windows, the galleries and glass domed reading room, the old Council chamber and the library reached by a dramatic stone staircase.

A series of refurbished meeting rooms offering state of the art audio-visual equipment are also available.

Everything from a working lunch to a banquet can be catered for.

Some out-of-the-ordinary functions have been managed by John Lotinga's team: in recent months the reading room was the scene of the Nigel Benn weigh-in, and Harry Carpenter's retirement dinner was held in the common room.A wide range of practical help is available.

The careers and recruitment service can provide a fully-qualified locum - often within 24 hours - to help out with a work backlog or to cover for holiday or sickness absence.

It can also assist with advice following redundancy and appointments of staff at all levels.

Its success rate, according to Tim Toghill, who heads the service, is virtually 100% in placing newly qualified staff and around 90% in finding locums.The careers side is complementary to recruitment, offering advice and guidance to applicants for courses and traineeships, including a comprehensive range of literature and advice about CVs, interviews and other aspects of job hunting.

Members can return the compliment and offer their services to the careers office, which regularly receives many requests for speakers from schools and colleges.

'If any qualified solicitors want to get involved in advising young people about a career in law - through the solicitors careers advisory service - we will be pleased to hear from them,' says careers and recruitment manager Tim Toghill.

Volunteers are provided with a full back-up service with a range of literature and briefings on the current recruitment situation.More practical help is offered by the press and parliamentary unit.

Lawyers are in the public eye as never before but talking to journalists still carries horrors for many.

The answer, according to Sue Stapely, head of the unit, is media training.

'We recognise an increasing demand for solicitors, barristers, law lecturers and others to become versed in how to handle media interest,' she says.

'But we strongly recommend that they con template media training before they hit the spotlight and before problems arise.' Roughly eight courses are run each year, each with a maximum of eight participants.

The regular trainers are Ms Stapely and two professional broadcasters, who all offer an 'after-care service' at no extra charge.

Media training is a very exposing experience, but you learn a lot, says Ms Stapely.

'You do improve with practice, provided you keep your wits about you.'The Law Society's publications aim to provide practical help rather than an academic treatment of the law.

One example is the Conveyancing Handbook by Frances Silverman, which builds on the volumes of enquiries the Society receives every day from conveyancing practitioners.'We gear all our publications to needs that practitioners have expressed to the Society, and we aim to provide both excellent quality and excellent value,' says Ruth Lawrence, head of the publications department.

The range includes works that turn committee guidance into practical information for solicitors and authoritative reference publications such as the national and regional directories.

New publications this year include The Survival Guide for Law Clerks, a new edition of the highly successful Probate Practitioners' Handbook, guides to conditional fees and environmental law and two special publications for the 150th anniversary year - histories of the Society and of the architecture of the Hall.

All publications are on sale at the Strand shop, together with items such as Law Society ties and scarves, polo shirts and sweatshirts.Mr Bignell is quick to respond to members' suggestions and three new initiatives are hot off the press.

Some 43% of respondents to a questionnaire sent to members last year indicated they would use overnight accommodation at Law Society Hall or nearby.

As a result, corporate membership of the Royal Over-Seas League has been negotiated.

Members can use the league's facilities in central London and Edinburgh as well as reciprocal clubs worldwide at a reduced annual subscription and with no entrance fee.

'We used to do all our membership services in-house,' says Mr Bignell.

'Then we began to use the bulk-buying power of the profession for continuing services such as household insurance and the gold card.

Now I am trying to pioneer the use of that collective buying power to get short-term discounts.' To this end, two new schemes are soon to be announced: a mortgage discount in association with Bradford & Bingley and a wine discount arrangement with Peatlings.