Whatever you may think of his jokey election slogan - 'Don't dodge, vote for Hodge' - the man who has been tipped as a future Lord Chancellor is going all out to make sure that he first gets the chance to lead the solicitors' profession.Henry Hodge launched his electoral campaign last week with a bumper manifesto covering the A-Z of solicitors' concerns.

Anxious to put across the idea that he is not just the champion of the High Street, the manifesto includes pledges to promote City firms' contributions to invisible earnings and to continue to fight for rights to establish offices throughout the EU.But Mr Hodge, who is the legal aid practitioner's voice on the Council and runs a legal aid practice in Camden, makes no bones about admitting that legal aid issues will dominate his agenda.

Within a few weeks the Lord Chancellor is expected to unwrap radical reform proposals which will test the profession's leaders to the nth degree.

Mr Hodge knows this.

The signs are already there.

This year's pay round unambiguously singled out franchised firms for special attention, and Lord Mackay's proposals are expected to show further bias in favour of franchisees.All of this raises the question: should the Law Society continue to bat evenly on behalf of franchisees and non-franchisees alike? Or should it go with the tide and accept that the franchised minority is entitled to the lion's share of the work and to extra pay?'It is a difficult one,' concedes Mr Hodge.

'What we have to do is to continue to argue that the public needs access to a wide range of solicitors' offices, so we will resist very hard any suggestion that legal aid services must be provided exclusively through franchised firms.'But Mr Hodge is a realist who recognises that there is only so much the Society can do in the face of a determined political decision by government.

'If the government says that the only people who can provide legal services in the big conurbations are franchised solicitors, then it is in the hands of solicitors; they will have to get a franchise if they want to continue to do the work.'Within an hour of Mr Hodge's manifesto hitting the streets, his opponent in the presidential race , Martin Mears, had shot out a statement denouncing Mr Hodge's performance on legal aid.

'The effectiveness of his representation speaks for itself: no increase in legal aid rates for four years, the imposition of franchising and fixed fees [and] block grants on the horizon.' It was, he summed up, 'an unambiguous record of failure'.'Rubbish,' says Mr Hodge, hotly.

'The position which we do not trumpet is that over the last five years the amount of money coming from the legal aid system into the profession has doubled.

And if that is failure, I would like to know what is success.'Now, with the government earnestly scouting around for ways of reining in expenditure, the task for the Society was to stop 'disastrous things happening' to the profession.

Here again Mr Hodge stresses the need to be realistic when faced with a government with the bit between its teeth.

The Society could not turn back the tide but it could limit the damage through tough negotiation.

And, he points out, it had done precisely that with standard fees for magistrates' court work.

In the first place it had managed to delay their introduction for four years and the final deal struck included many concessions to the profession.'Although the bureaucracy of standard fees is disliked I challenge anybody to go around and get a large number of solicitors who say that they are a complete disaster.

They work reasonably well and that is down to the Law Society,' he says.

Equally he believes the Society can take the credit for hammering out a much more favourable franchising deal than might otherwise have been the case.Mr Hodge's manifesto includes a string of pledges aimed at saving the profession money.

He will reduce the practising fee by 10%, conduct an audit of Society activities and enforce a new cost-conscious culture at Chancery Lane.

But here again he is taunted by his opponent, Mr Mears, as a late convert to prudent economics.

Mr Mears points out that during Mr Hodge's 11-year stint on Council, the practising certificate shot up from £80 to £495 and the Society's expenditure rose from £6.2 million to £48 million.But Mr Hodge, who joined the Council at a time when the Society was in disgrace over the Glanville Davies affair, believes heavy investment was necessary to shake off the old discredited regime and equip the Society to be an effective professional body.

There had been 'some very significant changes - many of great benefit to the profession'.What he is saying now, however, is that given the Society's phenomenal growth it is time for the closest scrutiny of expenditure.

He suspects, given his experience of bureaucracies, that there is fat in the system which could be trimmed back.Mr Hodge's political affiliations have been made an issue in the presidential campaign by Mr Mears, who talks disparagingly of him being part of 'the liberal left establishment'.

There is no denying Mr Hodge's record.

A member of the Labour party for over 30 years, he has been a Labour councillor and a candidate in a general election.

He is married to Labour MP Margaret Hodge, he is a friend of Tony Blair and supports the new Labour agenda.

But he refuses to be characterised as 'some oddball coming from the far left'.

His political views have never got in the way of representing the profession, he insists.A strong showing from women solicitors could be very important to Mr Hodge's electoral chances.

Running against a woman candidate, Eileen Pembridge, he will have to work hard for this vote.

But Mr Hodge does have woman appeal.

The reaction to him at a recent wom en lawyers' conference, where he spoke with convincing empathy about the glass ceiling and other obstacles, was very favourable.

One delegate described him as 'not your usual patronising new man'.Mr Hodge describes himself as 'not your standard solicitor'.

By this he means that he did not progress seamlessly from articles to partnership, but managed to fit in stints as secretary to Justice and deputy director of the Child Poverty Action Group before setting up his own firm, Hodge Jones & Allen, in 1977.

By pointing all of this out, he is implying that he has more street cred than the other candidates.

But Eileen Pembridge says: 'Henry is more establishment than he likes to believe.'