The Law Society has set about improving its attitude to the profession, reorganising itself to react more quickly to the profession's concerns and is examining whether it is doing the right things in the right way.

This news may come as a surprise because some legal journals prefer to focus on the latest party-political style press release.

I may have been reported as leading an anti-presidential caucus of Council members, but the reports are incorrect.

My experience as a Council member has taught me that the Law Society has many things to be proud of, but also much which needs to be substantially improved.

Some reforming Council members have bee n pressing for changes - though perhaps we have not been strident enough.In April, well before the presidential election, I wrote the first draft of an issues paper called 'What is wrong with the Law Society? What are we going to do about it?' I invited a group of reform-minded colleagues to help develop this, and to support its proposed reappraisal of the Law Society's attitude, organisation and activities.Others have sought to use the existence of this group for their own ends.

One Council politician, who had not attended a meeting of the group, was reported to have described it (wrongly) as a group opposing the President.

The President has sought to form a presidential party in reaction to the non-existent threat.Having developed the issues paper, we took it to the September Council meeting and used it as the basis for two motions.

Both motions were passed without dissent.

The first motion accepted the need for reform, and told the strategy committee to produce by October a timetabled programme for the Council to consider, suggesting a range of ideas about the Society's organisation and its relationship with the membership.

This would include:-- changing the attitude of the Law Society from a bureaucracy to a service organisation;-- speeding decisions and increasing accountability by substituting an elected policy committee for the largely nominated strategy committee;-- easing the presidential workload by separating many ceremonial functions from policy ones and considering which should fall to the President and which to others;-- replacing the current bureaucratic committee structure with policy teams - working parties set up to see tasks through within a set time and budget;-- creating specialist sections, where practitioners in particular fields could work together on developing policy and providing services.This led, in October, to an agreement that the Council would discuss the issues in two stages - at two subsequent meetings - so that firm proposals could be developed and presented to it in March or April by the strategy committee, assisted by a small reform steering group.The second motion set up an activity audit working party to investigate and recommend by March:-- which of the Law Society's activities should be continued;-- which should be free, subsidised, charged at cost or expected to be profit making;-- which should be market tested;-- which should be conducted centrally and which regionally.The reform steering group and the activity audit working party count both the President and me amongst their members.

So much for an anti-presidential caucus.

While some are still talking about reform, the real process of reform has already begun.