New President's First Speech.

Solicitors with bad complaints records may be charged on the 'polluter pays' principle, Law Society President Michael Napier announced last week in his first major speech since taking office.

Mr Napier made the announcement at the Institute of Legal Executives' (ILEX) annual conference at Derby University.

He said: 'The time has come to examine a system where the firms who never -- or rarely -- have complaints are, in effect, subsidising those who are not paying enough attention to client care.'

This may herald a regime in which firms generating disproportionately high complaints pay the costs of dealing with those upheld against them.

Mr Napier also questioned the reliance of the Community Legal Service (CLS) on computers, and exhorted lawyers to be proud and stand up to the threat of unqualified advisers.

He said on-line advice, interactive kiosks, and cyberspace have 'a vital role to play' in helping access to justice, but he added that they could not substitute 'direct advice and direct representation'.

In a veiled reference to the government's justask.com Web site, a cornerstone of the CLS, Mr Napier said a 'snazzy website', albeit good, must facilitate quality legal advice.

He said this meant publicly funded lawyers must be properly paid, adding 'that is not just the lowest figure that the government can get away with'.

Referring to the increasing numbers of claims management companies and their hard-sell advertising techniques, Mr Napier said professional expertise, excellent client care and 'standard-bearing self-regulation' set lawyers apart from 'the unqualified pretenders'.

Lawyers, he added, must 'beat them at their own game'.

Mr Napier said the major challenge facing the Law Society was to reform itself, and to modernise internally.

'Mussolini said that governing Italy was not impossible, but irrelevant.

That is not true of the Law Society,' he said.

The conference came at the beginning of Rosemary Cowley's term as president of ILEX.

A school-leaver at 16, Ms Cowley qualified as a legal executive in 1990.

She heads up a team of seven conveyancers at Southampton law firm Moore & Blatch, and was first elected to the ILEX council in 1992.

Jeremy Fleming