KEEP THE STATUS QUO -- MARTIN MEARS SURVEYS THE PROPOSED LANDSCAPE AS DETAILED IN THE RECENT REFORM CONSULTATION PAPER -- AND HE LIKES NO PART OF ITEvery self-respecting politician claims to be a reformer.

In the same way, there has been no time during the past five years when the Law Society has not claimed to be immersed in a process of radical reform.I have lost count of all the reform initiatives, reform working parties, reform task forces, and reform consultation papers.

None of this bustle led to very much.And now we have the latest batch of proposals.

These are set out in the consultation paper circulated with the Gazette a few weeks ago.

They are presented as offering yet another bright dawn.

However, this dawn is, as I shall attempt to show, a false one.The size of the council would be increased from 75 to 120 members and would probably meet only six times a year.

Could one devise any better method of reducing the practical effectiveness of a representative body?The new council would be a mere talking-shop and rubber-stamping body.

No solicitor of any calibre would want to waste his time in serving on it.

All real decisions would be taken by the proposed new 'cabinet', that is to say, a closed circle of insiders.The expanded rubber-stamp council would include increased representation for specialist groups and sectional interests.

The council already contains 15 members who supposedly represent sectional interests.

Even now there is considerable difficulty in filling these seats.

If there are going to be more sectional representatives then the problem of actually finding people will be correspondingly greater.Therefore, it is highly probable that the new sectional representatives will be nominated by particular groups.

But a number of these groups are not in the least democratic or genuinely representative.

Without members' subscriptions and dependent on subsidies from Chancery Lane, their culture is, not surprisingly, exactly the same as that of the Law Society's Council itself.The profession would lose its right to choose its leaders in open elections.

These leaders would instead be selected by the council.

This is a straightforward reversion to the pre-1995 'Buggins turn' system.

The justification for this is that contested elections create bad publicity.

In fact, this year's elections did nothing of the kind because they were fought, as they ought to be, with appropriate courtesy and restraint.It is, in any event, a curious idea that people should be deprived of the right to choose their representatives because these representatives sometimes behave badly.In fact, office holder elections are an essential democratic control.

At present, they are the only effective way in which the profession can send a message to the Law Society.The Society would be run by a 15-person 'cabinet'.

This would include the Society's chief executive and six senior members.

Since these are responsible to and seek promotion from the chief executive it would be inevitable that they and their boss would vote as one group.

I can think of no representative body where paid unelected staff are entrusted with such powers.The consultation paper's proposed lay commissioner for complaints would have power to make compensation awards up to £5,000.

He would be attached to the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) and have the right to attend and address the council, to produce an annual report to government 'and other stakeholders' at the Society's expense.

He would also recommend performance and quality targets.By its very nature, the lay commissioner's office would involve a permanent tension both with the OSS and the Legal Services Ombudsman (LSO).The lay commissioner is a misnomer.

We should properly be talking of a lay commissioner's office because the commissioner would need adequate staffing and resources to do the job.

All this would be paid for by the profession.The commissioner would, under the proposals, not be appointed by the Law Society and his independence would be guaranteed.

That means that the Society could not dismiss him either.Also, it is probable that the lay commissioner will manifest his independence by producing a critical annual report of the kind we are accustomed to receive from the LSO.No attempt has been made to cost the proposal (or, indeed, any of the other proposals).

The OSS now has a staff of hundreds and consumes more than one-third of the practising certificate fee.

What kind of staff will the lay commissioner have? And who will decide the size of his budget?It would be politically impossible for the Law Society to allow him to say that he was starved of resources.

The profession's financial commitment would in practice be open-ended.Last year, the Law Society employed management consultants to produce recommendations on the reorganisation and staffing of the OSS.

The recommendations have been - or are in the process of being - implemented.

We are assured that the OSS now has its problems under control.

If this is so, what justification can there be for introducing an outside player into the game?Even the 'reformers' acknowledge that a lay commissioner's office carries one particularly disagreeable risk.

It creates a ready-made consumer-orientated entity for the government to take over as a going concern - along with the OSS.

That indeed would be the end of any meaningful self- regulation.

In future, the position would at least have the virtue of simplicity - the commissioner would regulate in the manner he thought best and the profession would pick up the bill.The fundamental objection to the consultation paper proposals is that they are in reality intensely regressive.

Their tendency is to reinforce all the worst features of the current regime - an ineffective and out-of-touch council easily manipulated by people with special agendas; a cabinet of entrenched and complacent insiders; an obese bureaucracy whose hugely expanded role in the Law Society's administration would result in yet further accretions of personnel and expenditure.It would be better to maintain the status quo than have 'reforms' like these.LOCAL SUPPORT -- ROGER BOWDEN SAYS THERE IS MUCH TO RECOMMEND IN THE PROPOSED REFORMS -- ESPECIALLY ITS AIMS AT BEST PRACTICE, WHICH WOULD BE INSTANTLY RECOGNISED BY LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAWYERSWorking in an environment of service provision and regulation, covering a wide range of functions and a variety of customers, is something which local authorities have been doing for more than a century.And it is something which they will be doing, in different ways perhaps, for many years to come.From my perspective, therefore, it is a realistic goal to aim to create a practical structure for a Law Society acting a s a model regulator, an effective advocate for the whole profession, and a leading voice on law reform.

It is not only a worthy goal but also a considerable challenge.The proposal for a larger Law Society Council to facilitate better representation for a diverse profession is attractive, not least to a group of 3,300 local government solicitors which formerly had two non-constituency seats, and lost one of them - in somewhat unsatisfactory circumstances - last year.The president and his team have set themselves the task of restoring interest in the Law Society among the profession, recognising the different needs and aspirations of the various sectors - a far better word than 'sections'.That interest, once restored, will need a worthwhile outlet - and an enlarged council would provide that.An appropriate blend of constituency and sectoral representation would offer the most effective way of achieving full representational credibility.A truly representative council would also have a legitimacy as an electoral college and could be an effective proving ground for potential office-holders and board members.Whether there is a need for lay membership of the council is less clear.

Lay people (non-councillors) have a role in certain aspects of local government, but as appointees to committees rather than as members of the council.A similar approach, with lay people serving at board level, would add value to that work without detracting from the representative nature of the council.There is little by way of detail in the consultation paper about the functions of the council.

Its functions are broadly stated as electing the office-holders; approving strategic priorities; determining policy; setting the budget; and delegating authority to oversee the Law Society's strategic plan.Allocating responsibilities on the basis of policy making being the province of the council, and implementation and day-to-day decision-making being that of the main board and the functional boards, accords broadly with the local authority experience.However, the strategic objectives which, it is proposed, should be one of the responsibilities of the functional boards to agree, must conform to the policy framework established by the council.It has long been recognised in local government that the council, which might vary in size from around 40 councillors to around 100, is not an efficient body for making detailed or day-to-day decisions.An extensive scheme of delegation of the council's authority to committees, sub-committees, and individual officers has been the traditional solution.

The key to the acceptance of delegation, and to its effectiveness in democratic terms, is that delegation must take place against a background of a clear policy framework, properly defined terms of reference, and appropriate budgetary control.The concept of a main board acting as a cabinet in support of the council, with functional boards below it is, therefore, not something which need be regarded as novel in a multi-role representative organisation.The diagrammatic representation in the consultation paper would be recognisable instantly to my local authority colleagues as a traditional council committee structure.However, it is essential that the framework within which it operates has the key elements described earlier.Whether the council would be content to rely on an annual report by way of holding the main board to account seems improbable, especially in the early days of a new structure.If, as is proposed, the council is to delegate its authority to the main board, and onto the functional boards, the council, on behalf of the profession at large, must surely have more clearly defined mechanisms for monitoring and scrutiny than can be gleaned from the consultation paper proposals.The composition of the main board is not directly comparable to the local government position.

In our terms it is a mixture of councillors and paid officers.However, it is not so far removed from the model of governance found in the corporate world and ought, therefore, to be able to draw on that body of experience in finding effective ways to work.

Remuneration is not mentioned specifically in relation to the main board, though it is in relation to the functional boards.It is becoming recognised in local government that people with the talent and commitment required of councillors in leading positions may only be able to participate if they are remunerated suitably.The solicitors' profession may have to face up to the fact that the Law Society can only be effective and efficient if it makes it possible, financially, for its able members to participate fully in the work of the boards.Overall, there seems to be much to be said in favour of the structure proposed in the consultation paper.

It would have been reassuring to see some reference to the future arrangements in respect of the groups.The groups are a cost-effective and efficient way of meeting the needs and aspirations of the members of the profession they represent.It would be a false economy if the modest core funding which they enjoy were to become a casualty of a reformed Law Society.But, the broad structure has the capability to meet the future needs of the profession.

The devil may be in the detail.

I sincerely hope not.