-- If solicitors want to effect a real change they should vote for the Mears/Sayer ticket, says vice-presidential candidate Robert Sayer.For too long the Society has been afraid of upsetting the government, and consumer pressure groups and been too timid and defeatist to stand up for ordinary solicitors.It is time for a change.

The only way to achieve that is to elect a President and Vice-President who have the courage and determination to put things right.

A vote f or any of the establishment candidates will be taken as an endorsement of all that the Law Society has done over the last ten years and a mandate to carry on in exactly the same way in the future.

Judge them not by what they now promise but by their record.

Martin Mears and I are the only candidates who genuinely want reform.We believe that the Society must respect its own members and recognise that the vast majority of them are decent, hard working and honest.

The profession is big enough to have room for every kind of firm, from specialists to general practices, City firms to sole practitioners.

The Society's job is to represent all of us effectively.Every firm is suffering from the over-emphasis on price competition.

Instead of blaming market forces and doing nothing, the Society should have been doing all that it could to persuade clients that always to demand the cheapest fee is a foolishly short-sighted mistake.

It should have reminded them that a high quality service can only be maintained if a price fair to both client and solicitor is charged.

Instead of imposing rules and unproven practice management schemes it should have been fighting the public relations battle.I am an ordinary high street solicitor.

I qualified 16 years ago and during the last 12 years have built up my own firm in suburban London.

I understand the profession's problems, I deal with them every day.

Restoring conveyancing fees and legal aid rates to a sensible level is not just an academic exercise to me.

My future depends on it.

I also appreciate that firms which deal with other areas of the law are equally dependant on restoring fee levels in their fields and that returning us all to financial health will do more to solve the profession's problems than any amount of intrusive new regulation.

I am not prepared to sit back and let the Law Society continue to fail us.

If you feel the same, vote for me.To pretend that there are any simple solutions would be to insult your intelligence.

What is needed is the will to succeed.

I recognise that neither solicitors nor clients benefit from a legal profession weakened to the point of extinction, and if saving it means putting the profession's interest temporarily in front of clients I will do so and be proud of it.Many of you are disillusioned and may be tempted to abstain.

Please do not - this election is important.

For the first time you have a real opportunity to influence your own futures.

Every wasted vote helps preserve the unacceptable status quo.-- With the reputation of the profession at stake, John Aucott, vice-presidential candidate, urges a vote in favour of putting the client first.This election is about how we fact the future.

It poses us with a stark choice between two conflicting views.

We can either go forward and become a modern profession that thrives by putting our clients first.

Or we can become little more than a protectionist clique, where clients come second.

Whoever heard of anything more absurd than a service business where the clients come second?As the Council's candidate for Vice-President, I welcome the election.

It will enable us to clear the air and decide the direction the professions is going to take.

The very reputation of solicitors and of the profession is at issue.

It matters who wins.

So please use your vote.Henry Hodge and I are supported by the Council because we have the experience and ability to deliver reform whilst keeping the profession united.

We have always been reformers.

We are proud of the Law Society's achievements -- including keeping institutions out of conveyancing and achieving rights of audience.

But we are not blind to its shortcomings either.

The imputs of the election will help Mr Hodge and me push through changes we have long been working for.I stand for: a modern, ambitious and prosperous profession; rooting out the few rogues who harm our reputations; experienced leadership which does not tack and trim; raising the profession's esteem by support, self-help and conviction; helping practitioners serve their clients by national and regional support from the Law Society.I want to see young lawyers, the lifeblood of our profession, taught management and communication skills at the earliest possible point in their training.

Like all of us, they will need to be equipped to take on the increasing competition in the years ahead with skill, confidence and ambition.Resist those who advocate the adoption of a purely self-centred approach.

Fight the Luddite tendency.

We cannot afford to ditch the thing on which all our businesses depend -- our professionalism.

That would be a sure recipe for disaster.

And if we sacrificed our clients' interest to our own, how long do you think it would be before the government intervened and regulated us to death?I am not going to promise to bring back the good old days.

Do not be hoodwinked by those who promise to do so with hollow and simplistic answers to complex problems.

The world is changing, and the profession must change with it.

What I do promise is that if I am elected I will ensure that the Law Society helps the profession through these difficult times.

I will dedicate myself to work to rebuild the profession's ambition and morale.My belief that we have to earn respect from our clients by putting them first has shaped my work both as a practising solicitor and as a member of the Law Society Council, my local law society and the Young Solicitors Group.

it is that experience which has given me the know-how to deliver the objectives I have set myself.Do not throw your vote away on a vain appeal to the past.

Vote for me and Mr Hodge as the team to build a successful future.