The ability to intervene in a solicitor's practice is the most draconian power available to the Law Society.

The effect of an intervention is to vest in the Society the practice money - including the office account - and to compel the delivery up of all documents in connection with the practice.

In many cases the solicitor's practising certificate is also suspended.

The intervention does not affect the liabilities of the solicitor to creditors.

Additionally, the Society can recover the cost of the intervention from the solicitor.

Stripped of the office account and files - and attendant liens - the solicitor will often have nothing to offer creditors.

In many cases the subsequent bankruptcy adds insult to the injury.Schedule 1 to the Solicitors Act 1974 sets out a number of grounds for an intervention.

The most important grounds are 'reason to suspec t dishonesty' and breaches of the Solicitors Accounts Rules.

The Access to Justice Act 1999 has added another ground.

The Society can now intervene if it is satisfied that the solicitor has failed to comply with the practice rules.

This amendment to schedule 1 to the Solicitors Act 1974 came into force on 27 September 1999.

While this addition, on its face, appears modest, it takes the intervention jurisdiction into unchartered territory.

What this means is that the Society could intervene if it considered that a solicitor was in breach of, for example, rule 15.

There are probably many solicitors, particularly those with bad complaints records, in respect of whom the Society could now exercise its power to intervene.

For the most part, interventions are in practice confined to sole practitioners but there is nothing inherent in the legislation to prevent intervention into a partnership.The power to intervene is not unfettered.

The solicitor has the right to apply to the Chancery Division to set aside the intervention.

This right must be exercised within eight days of the intervention.The way in which the court approaches these cases is distinct from a judicial review.

The court takes into account any relevant facts including those that have come to light between the intervention and the hearing and, in effect, substitutes its judgment for that of the Law Society.

This said, the views of the Society will have considerable, but not conclusive weight.The latest challenge to an intervention was heard in June before Mr Justice Jonathan Parker in Re A Solicitor (No 2).

The claimant solicitor was unsuccessful.

This was an intervention on the grounds of suspected dishonesty involving alleged mortgage frauds.

Mr Justice Parker - in accordance with the authorities - adopted a two-fold test.

First, to satisfy himself that the grounds for intervention continued to exist, and second, to consider whether in all the circumstances of the case the intervention ought to continue.

This latter test involves balancing the public interest, the interests of clients and the solicitor's interest.It follows from the nature of the court's discretion that the solicitor must get on with the proceedings as, with the passage of time, the court is less likely to unravel the intervention.

In the recent case of Virdi v The Law Society, the court struck out an application because the solicitor did not progress his application for several months after the intervention.

By that time, clients had been notified of the intervention and the active files had been transferred to other solicitors.

There was nothing the court could effectively do to unravel the intervention, even if the merits were to justify it.Until now the attempts made by solicitors to set aside interventions have been unsuccessful.

The principal reason for this is that the courts have not had to grapple with difficult subjective questions as to the conduct of a solicitor's practice.

If there is a bona fide reason to suspect dishonesty - not a particularly high test - then the courts have been understandably reluctant to set aside interventions.

Equally, breaches of the Solicitors Accounts Rules normally entail a shortfall on the solicitor's client account.

While this might not have involved dishonesty, clients' money would have been put at risk.

In these circumstances any judge would be reluctant to return the client account to the solicitor.The power to intervene for breaches of the practice rules may raise more difficult problems.

Clearly, the power to intervene now arises in a wider range of situations.

Previously, interventions tended to be centred around misuse of the client account or suspected dishonesty.

Prior to an intervention based on the practice rules, the solicitor must be served with a notice in writing stating that the rules have been breached and the power to intervene has arisen.At any subsequent hearing the court is, as now, likely to find that grounds for intervention exist.

However, it is at the second stage, the exercise of the court's discretion, or judgment, that new issues arise.If one takes as an example persistent breaches of rule 15 as grounds for the intervention, the public interest arguments are distinct from those in existing cases.

The reasons for intervening in firms with a bad complaints record, are less to do with protecting client money and more to do with preserving the reputation of the profession and the cost to the profession in dealing with that firm's complaints.All of these are powerful but untested arguments.

It will remain to be seen how the Law Society will exercise its new power and how the courts will approach any challenge to the use of this power.

This said, the Society could be encouraged by the words of Lord Justice Ward in Giles v The Law Society : 'The solicitors' profession is an honourable one.

Honour is the collective invaluable asset of the whole profession.

That honour compels the jealous respect of all members of the profession and it must be vigilantly guarded by its governing body.'