FIGHTING MODERN BATTLE'I am a moderniser.

I believe that the law is a business and has to be run like a business,' says John Aucott, the Birmingham solicitor who was nominated by the Law Society's Council to be Vice-President last week.This week, Mr Aucott steps down as senior partner of Edge & Ellison, one of Birmingham's foremost commercial firms.

Having held the job for the duration of the recession, he claims complete empathy with firms who have taken a buffeting.

'I know how tough it is fighting to retain market share, fighting for new business.

I do understand how firms are feeling.'Mr Aucott, who has been on the Council for 11 years, now goes forward to fight fellow Council member Robert Sayer in a postal ballot of the entire membership in June.

His campaign will highlight the need for the profession to confront the realities of practice today.

'I am not going to tell solicitors what they want to hear.

I am going to tell them what they have to hear if they are to survive in the changed world in which we live.'Mr Aucott believes that only about a third of the profession has woken up to this changed world, which, he says, requires the adoption of new approaches to management, administration and client care.

The majority, he claims, still harks back to a time when conveyancing was buoyant and competition generally was not so fierce.

He sees it as his job to turn around those who are in the reversionary category 'so that they can provide the best value for their clients and profit for themselves'.Another of Mr Aucott's priorities is to root out fraud within the profession, and he believes that it is this area which offers the most scope for reducing the cost of practice.

'We want to create a climate in which any fraudster knows tha t he is going to be caught.' Tough monitoring of the kind that the Society has put in place is the key to cleaning up the profession, he says.

He believes the achievement of this is worth heavy investment in the short term.In June, Mr Aucott will unveil the preliminary findings of the Partnership Commission - a body established by the Society under his chairmanship to look at how the energies of local law societies could be harnessed more effectively.

A principal recommendation, which will be put out for consultation, will be for the establishment of several more regional offices around the country.

These regional outlets would support local law societies in the provision of conciliation and continuing education services.

Each regional office would also have specialist committees - revenue law, company, family etc - to mirror those in Chancery Lane.

The idea, explains Mr Aucott, is to draw in 'non-Law Society types...I want to attract people who think the Law Society is an irrelevance but who would want to contribute in a specialist field.'RINGING THE CHANGESRobert Sayer wants the Law Society 'to get off its backside and do something about the obvious problems affecting its members.' The blunt-spoken new member of the Council is running for Vice-President on an anti-Chancery Lane ticket along with presidential candidate Martin Mears.He despairs of what he sees as Chancery Lane's defeatism: 'What faced with problems they come up with reasons why they cannot do anything about it.' He points to overcrowding in the profession as a prime example, saying that the Society went ahead with authorising some 8000 courses although the number of trainee places has hovered around the 3500 mark for the last few years.

'Now they say they cannot do anything about it because the colleges might sue them or the OFT might object.

But anybody with the slightest common sense knows that something has got to be done about it.'Mr Sayer believes that it is not simply a case of matching the number of course places to trainee places.

Something more drastic is needed, he says, because trainees are not being kept on by firms.

'They are being used as a form of cheap labour,' he says, suggesting that the RSPCA's slogan - 'A dog is not just for Christmas' - might be adapted to 'A solicitor is not just for two years'.Critics of Mr Sayer say that while he is strong on withering criticism of Chancery Lane, he has singularly failed to put forward any workable alternatives.

He is best known for his advocacy of hourly rates for conveyancing work.

And an article he wrote on the subject in the Gazette drew almost 900 responses from solicitors anxious to find out more.

But seasoned observers of the conveyancing market say wholesale reversion to hourly rates is completely unrealistic in the present fiercely competitive market.Mr Sayer has also drawn criticism for a proposal he put out through the LINK communications network (he is a technophile) aimed at improving the thought processes at Chancery Lane.

He suggested that whenever a policy area was to be reviewed, at least two, and perhaps three, teams should be set to work, operating independently of one another.

'Not only would they act as controls on each other but natural rivalry might spur some original thinking,' he said.

The proposal was immediately slammed by fellow Council member Richard Hegarty, who pointed out that it would mean extra staff.Later this month Mr Sayer will produce his manifesto and he claims to be 'reasonably confident' of winning the election.

He dismisses his opponent as 'a Law Society functionary' and says that the Mears/Sayer ticket offers the disaffected within the profession 'their one chance to show how unhappy they are'.

If they do not take that chance, they will get 'more of the same', he says.