Mike Howells, a Welshman from Pembrokeshire and one of the longest serving members of the Law Society's Council, admits to being 'a bit awkward, a bit stubborn' and to having a love/hate relationship with Chancery Lane.Being part of the ruling body is important to him.

'It actually keeps me sane,' he confides.

'The opportunity to have short breaks away from all the pressures of the office...

the ability to talk about things in the abstract rather than specific [client] problems all the time is enormously valuable.'But against that he is deeply frustrated by the Council's lack of impact.

'The main frustration is that I do not think that the job we do is fully understood.

And I think there are jobs that we could be doing which we are not.' For example? 'Commenting on matters of public importance, for one thing.' He explains that there is no forum within the Council to discuss contemporaneous legal issues.

'I am worried about the relevance of a great deal of what we are discussing.' Procedural rules require 14 days notice for a matter to be raised by motion, which automatically excludes consideration of issues arising within that fortnight.

A shorter period (48 hours) is required to ask a question, but no debate is allowed on the answer.By the time the majority of matters come to the Council they have been through a labyrinth of committees and the whole process can take up to nine months.

'Therefore,' Mr Howells points out, 'the Council is invariably dealing with matters which are long past their best before date.

And, if a scandal breaks, or if the Lord Chancellor makes an important announcement, there is no opportunity to discuss it.'Mr Howells believes that the Council should be the natural contact for the media for comment on all current legal issues and insists that 'something has got to be done to redress the idea that the Council exists in a vacuum and pays no attention to what is going on in the outside world'.

He gives the example of how, in a week when the national media was giving wall-to-wall coverage to the issue of legal aid for the apparently wealthy and it was revealed that the Maxwell brothers had already received hundreds of thousands of pounds, not a word was heard in the Council chamber about it.The net effect of the procedural ob stacles to raising issues of the day at Council meetings is that journalists tend to turn to the Bar's leaders for comment.

They also look to Chancery Lane staff for comment rather than Council members and this, in Mr Howells' view, is not ideal.

'Good though they are, they do not have the same sex appeal for the radio producers and the TV producers of current affairs.'Mr Howells insists that he is not interested in publicity for publicity's sake.

'I do not want to do things purely for the entertainment of the press.

But it does seems to me that there are a number of younger members of the Council who have something useful to say about contemporary issues and they should be heard.'Mr Howells, who joined the Council in 1983, replacing the disgraced Glanville Davies, is due to become treasurer this September.

He is immensely chuffed about his impending elevation to the front bench - 'I will be the first provincial treasurer in the Society's 150-year history' - but he attributes it to luck, pointing out that vacancies are few.

'I am very fortunate, because it does not happen very much that a long serving member is suddenly wheeled out of retirement and given a job.'He prides himself on giving his constituents a fair representation - 'there is no point in them sending me up from Wales at vast expense if I am going to be a "yes" man' - and is acutely aware of how disaffected the profession feels at the moment.

He believes that the key to reducing this disaffection is to reduce the cost of practice.

'If we could reduce the practising fee, we would go a long way to reassuring the profession that we are alive to their problems and interests.'With that in mind, one of the first projects he intends to set in motion as head of the treasury is to conduct a full audit of the Society's activities.

'I do not know what everybody is beavering away at and, although I am sure they are working very hard and earning their money, what I want to know is what they are doing and why they are still doing it.' He stresses that he is not saying that Chancery Lane is involved in unnecessary activity but 'one has to establish an order of priorities'.His hunch is that the Society could possibly shed some of its undertakings.

'Do we really need a shop?' he asks, adding: 'I certainly have a strong feeling that the Society has now reached such a size and is doing so many things that before we bolt on any more activity we have to decide which activities we are going to drop.'Mr Howells attributes much of the misunderstanding of, and therefore dissatisfaction with, the Council's work to a grave failure of communication and marketing.

He offers the client care rule, rule 15, which 'is more honoured in the breach' and which does not specify that solicitors should give advance information on costs, as a prime example of this.

He suggests it should be re-packaged as a client's charter and explains: 'It is perfectly possible to argue that you should not impose an obligation on solicitors to give detailed information on their costs.

That argument won the day when it came before the Council, but it is very much more difficult to argue that a client is not entitled to know how much he is going to be charged.'He points out that if rule 15 were re-packaged as a statement of clients' rights rather than a list of obligations on solicitors it would be more acceptable to all parties.

And there would be a beneficial spin-off in less cases going to the Solicitors Complaints Bureau.

'If there was a breach of the charter it would be self-policing.

[Clients] could turn to the firms instead of to the SCB when charged too much.'Mr Howells is not coy about saying he would like to be President of the Society some day.

'Of course I would like to be President, any Council member would, and if they told you otherwise they would be being economical with the truth.' If he were to be elected he reckons Wales would be 'enormously pleased and proud'.For now his ambitions are more modest: 'To get through [the three-year office of the treasurer] without making a mess of it.' He is all geared up, making arrangements for video-conferencing facilities in Wales to ensure that he keeps in touch with Chancery Lane without having to spend too much time away from his busy personal injury practice.

His day-to-day work is very important to him.

'I love client work and I love seeing people and sorting things out.' But the Chancery Lane policy shop is there as his safety valve.

'Nobody is actually going to sue you for negligence if you get something wrong.'