Where has the Law Society gone? Everything that the Society used to do seems to have gone elsewhere. We now have the Legal Services Commission (formerly the Legal Aid Board) administering 'legal aid' which used to be run by the Law Society. The Legal Complaints Service has been set up - ditto. The Legal Services Board is to develop 'an efficient and effective regulatory system' - ditto. We now have the Solicitors Regulation Authority with its dreadful logo and a rather bland practising certificate - ditto. For sentimental reasons I have kept my last Law Society practising certificate as I rather like the Coat of Arms on the top.


We used to have a conference for solicitors. In days of yore, they were held in exotic locations such as Paris, the Channel Islands, Vienna and even Harrogate. Then it was reduced to one day and now we do not have a conference at all, just a pale imitation of a BAFTA Awards ceremony for a select number of individuals and firms.



Thankfully, some things do not change and, although it is not everybody's cup of tea - though Obiter and the SDT page make compulsive reading - we still have the good old Gazette?.



Thomas A Hoyle, Roebucks, Blackburn