Following the radical restructuring of the IBA, new president Francis Neate talks to Philip Hoult about the three priorities he has set the association that represents the world's lawyers

Despite the global dominance of City law firms, Francis Neate is the first English solicitor to be president of the International Bar Association (IBA) since Sir Denys Hicks in the 1970s.


The 64-year-old lawyer has enjoyed a prominent City career; first as head of litigation at Slaughter and May, then as group legal adviser at asset management company Schroders and now as 'of counsel' at US firm Kirkland & Ellis.


As president since the beginning of 2005, much of his two-year stint will be taken up in seeing through the radical restructuring of the organisation approved at the 2004 annual conference in Auckland.


The IBA is now split into two divisions: the legal practice division, which includes all the specialist committees concerned with practice; and the public and professional interest division (PPID), which focuses on issues facing the profession around the globe. The PPID also includes a new bar issues commission, intended to increase communication between the world's bar associations and law societies. The IBA has both organisational and individual members.


An architect of the reforms, Mr Neate acknowledges that the restructuring was 'complicated' but insists it was necessary. 'The individual members' activities, which have been the driving force for the last 20 years, were [previously] split between three sections [business law, legal practice, and energy and natural resources],' he explains. 'While two flourished, the third section on legal practice did not.'


Another motivation for the changes was the need to organise individual members' activities in a way that was economical and, from the point of view of the members, more efficient. 'When we examined how to do that, it became clearer that we also needed to find a way of reinvigorating the activities of the member organisations.'


Mr Neate sets the association three priorities, the first of which is to give members greater value for money. In this regard, it is looking to spread itself more widely from its power base in the European Union and North America.


Next month it will open an office in Brazil - its first outside London. Hailing this as 'a great step forward', Mr Neate says the IBA is getting stronger in the regions where it is not so active at the moment, such as Asia and eastern Europe.


There will be an expanded programme of regional activities, with an increased number of seminars and events that are more accessible to members. The association also plans to give business lawyers a louder voice in legal and regulatory developments at an international level, and pursue more initiatives such as the recently published code of ethics in arbitration.


The second priority is to promote greater involvement of member organisations, with the launch of the bar issues commission seen as a key development.


'The business lawyers are used to dominating events and, in terms of financial contribution, the individual members are what makes the organisation work,' Mr Neate admits. 'But we also want to make the IBA more relevant to bars and law societies. We have got to make that a success, and so far I am rather encouraged.'


Developing the work of the human rights institute is the third key objective, with the burdens on its time and resources as high as ever.


The institute's work is not simply a question of defending the rule of law and the rights of lawyers and judges - there are also demands for help in building legal capacity in developing countries. Thanks to a grant from the Department for International Development, the IBA has been heavily involved in training Iraqi judges in human rights law; it has also carried out capacity-building work in countries such as Swaziland and Botswana.


Initiatives like these inevitably raise the issue of funding. 'The problem is that you can raise money for a project but you have got to have the infrastructure in place to support it,' Mr Neate acknowledges. 'We can only grow as fast as we can fund our infrastructure - we have six staff in the institute and ideally we would double that.'


The IBA, he says, needs to find a way of increasing its regular income as well as its grant income. The proportion of the grants it receives that can be used to cover its administrative expenses, including salaries, is only a small proportion of the whole.


'It is constraints on our own staff time that are the main problem,' Mr Neate says. 'It is also the case that there are lots of lawyers out there who want to do their bit, but they can't fit in six months in Swaziland to help build capacity.'


Getting the IBA to achieve its key objectives will undoubtedly keep the new president busy, but Mr Neate's two years at the helm will also be lively for other reasons.


The debate over rules for 'fly in, fly out' lawyering - where lawyers work temporarily in another country - will rumble on, although he is sanguine about that. 'It is controversial and there is no harm in that - I do not see why business law practitioners should not have their say,' he argues. 'It is something that the member bar organisations have got to think about. I am not saying that they have to conform to what the business lawyers want but it is an area for sensible debate.'


Similarly, he acknowledges that the Clementi review could have a wide impact. 'There is pressure on the legal profession to get more competitive and that is not going to go away,' he suggests. 'Clementi may be solely relevant to the English profession in theory but some of the underlying thinking - for example, regarding consumer choice - is the way the western world is going.'


All this should make for a challenging time in office. Whether we will then have to wait a further 30 years for another English president remains to be seen.