The lord chief justice has called on lawyers to take the initiative in shaping their future and not wait for events to shape it for them.

Lord Judge said he would be ‘delighted’ if barristers, solicitors and legal executives ‘would together and separately address the structure of the legal profession as the public interest in the administration of justice will require it to be in, shall we say, five years’ time. Maybe even five years is too long’.

He told the Institute of Legal Executives’ annual president’s luncheon last week: ‘What I am driving at is the need, first, for the issue to be examined as a whole rather than in isolated compartments, and, second, for the process to be undertaken not as a matter of reaction to events but as a matter of planned construction before the intervention of events.

‘What is needed is foresight… and, perhaps, too, imagination about the world of economic stress and recession and where technological change of extraordinary magnitude will be taking us, and how we should respond to the consequent and inevitable challenges and changes.’

Diane Burleigh, the institute’s chief executive, described the words as ‘spot on’.

‘The public interest requires from lawyers the kind of ­forward thinking that anticipates new types of legal services delivered in innovative, affordable ways. The public interest demands a bringing together of best business practice with the integrity and respect for the rule of law that is the hallmark of our legal profession.’