The Lord Chancellor's advisory committee on legal education and conduct never stood a chance.

Conceived as a political compromise, the committee is revealed in its report on employed solicitors' rights of audience as drowning in the mire of legislation deliberately drafted to be obtuse and riven by interests known by all to be irreconcilable.The committee has had a somewhat inglorious history.

In 1989 the Lord Chancellor's Department stunned the legal world with a green paper, 'The work and organisation of the legal profession'.

To produce this the LCD, seen as somewhat lily-livered within Whitehall, was stiffened by shock troops from the Department of Trade and Industry.

The result was a paean of praise to competition.

The Law Society scrambled to protect the conveyancing monopoly and licked its lips at the prospect of higher court advocacy rights.The Bar did not, however, roll over and play dead.

Backed by the judiciary, it defended itself vigorously.

Mrs Thatcher was not, it transpired, in quite as strong a position as she imagined.

Enter Lord Mackay with a deal that moved the government out of a messy impasse.

The Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 would make all the right noises about increasing competition through encouraging 'new or better' ways of providing services.

However, any actual action would require reports from an advisory committee, approval by the Lord Chancellor and, in an unprecedented move, the individual approval of four senior 'designated' judges.

Everyone could leave the field arguing they had won.Came the next election and Lord Mackay was probably as surprised as the nation's bookmakers that he retained responsibility for this shaky edifice.

The Law Society had whipped in an application for full audience rights in April 1991.

This could only be stalled for a limited time and the advisory committee delivered its verdict in July 1993.

Caught between the pro and anti-Bar factions, it demanded movement of the goalposts.

It would agree on rights of audience for solicitors in private practice but not as unqualifiedly for those who were employed.

For them, the committee wanted a deal that required statutory change: percentage restrictions on work undertaken by Crown Prosecution Service lawyers.

Crown Court advocacy for the CPS is the major prize still at stake.

The Lord Chancellor and the designated judges rejected the committee's weaseling in time for Christmas.

In an attempt to stiffen the resolve of the committee, Lord Mackay tinkered with the membership.

Out in April 1994 went no less than seven of the 16 initial members.

A new committee chairman was also appointed.

We now know that this was not enough.

The latest report show s the committee split 8-8 in favour of rejecting rights of audience for employed solicitors with the chairman, Lord Steyn, adding his vote to protect the Bar from the CPS.

No less than five of the members of the minority were from the new batch of 'spine-stiffeners'.

Added to their votes were a former Law Society President, schools inspector and trade unionist.

The Bar held on to the academics, the judiciary and just enough independents to swing it.Absurdly, both sides even disagree on the proper construction of the relevant law to the same extent as they row about policy.

The result is a complete mess.

The majority give us 43 densely argued pages: the minority 64.

As an additional complication, the Law Society offered a deal in the middle of the proceedings.

In May 1995, clearly aware of division in the committee, it sought to amend its application so that rights of audience for CPS solicitors would be limited.

Advocates in private practice would be required to lead or present cases where defendants were committed for trial without their consent.

This cut no ice with the majority which instructed the committee's secretary to reply that 'there are no amendments to the solicitors rules of conduct...that should, in the committee's opinion, be made in order better to further the statutory objective, or to comply with the general principle', two confusingly broad and allegedly complementary pro-competition concepts introduced by the ill-fated Courts and Legal Services Act.

The concession was, however, enough for the minority.Lord Mackay now considers two opposing submissions from an advisory group that he appointed.

Both faithfully follow the arguments of the two branches of the legal profession.

The stage is, thus, set for the constitutional nightmare built into the legislative provisions.

Ultimately, this issue comes before four of our senior judges.

The hope was that, by this stage, time and debate would have worn down opposition and a compromise agreed by exhaustion if nothing else.

This manifestly will not happen.

It will be difficult to avoid judicial review of the joint or several decisions, whatever they may be, of the Lord Chief Justice, the President of the Family Division, the Vice-Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls.Lord Mackay will be lucky to stall this issue beyond the next election, particularly now that the leadership of his party seems a little more settled.

Some temporary refuge might be sought in the technical complications of the statutory drafting.

However, he may eventually find that he has to do what he should have done initially: draft legislation to make an open, accountable and difficult political decision between two competing interests.

In such an eventuality, the Law Society would seem to have a pretty unarguable case.

Why on earth cannot employed CPS solicitors appear in non-contentious cases or those where, but for the election of a defendant, they could have appeared in the magistrates' court, particularly if this issue is to be decided on any principles relating to competition rather than professional interest.