Simon Baker thinks big.

Training is not just about teaching tort to teenagers.

Life-long learning should be foremost in the minds of senior partners and, as the chairman of the Law Society's training committee, he is, he says, the person to put it there.'What I want', says Mr Baker forcefully, 'is a cascade of training.

The content and structure of the legal practice course is not one of my immediate concerns.

I want to drive the training culture into the heart of the solicitors' profession.

I want to make people understand that the training committee is not the Cinderella of the Law Society, devoted to byzantine rules and regulations, but that it carries the torch for the development agenda.'Mr Baker's agenda is to help firms succeed by persuading them to train their staff and partners continuously in broad-based skills, enabling them to compete competitively in a fast changing world.'Nobody owes solicitors a living,' he stresses.

'Lawyers have not been singled out for special unfavourable treatment by the government.

They simply cannot expect to do better than their clients.''What is happening to solicitors is happening everywhere,' says Mr Baker.

'It is not happening because of some conspiracy by Mrs Thatcher.

It is happening because the world is changing, because of the huge success of developing economies and the impact of information technology.

Clients are increasingly aware that they do not just do what they are told by solicitors and doctors and accountants.'The role of the training committee's chairman should be, says Mr Baker, to lead the solicitors' profession in the direction in which the rest of the business community is going.This stress on the business side of legal practice, which Mr Baker calls his competitive agenda, goes hand in hand with a vehement denunciation of any attempt by the profession to go down the road of protectionism.'If we look to defend monopolies or reserved areas we are bound to be disappointed because we would be shouting in the face of all the laws of economics,' says Mr Baker.Nor does he agree with Law Society President Martin Mears that there should be a cap on the number of entrants in to the profession.A working party established by the President will next week begin a review of over capacity in the profession.

Mr Baker was invited to serve on the working party but he turned down the offer because the training committee already takes up too much of his time.

The new chairman welcomes the working party's establishment, which he hopes will stimulate the great protectionism versus competitiveness debate.'I offer this challenge to the President of the Law Society,' announces Mr Baker.

'Let us meet again in the year 2000 at the solicitors annual conference and compare notes betwe en those solicitors who followed an agenda of protectionism and those who followed the training committee's agenda of competitiveness.

Then let us see who is better off.''I wish the Law Society, the President and Vice-President would devote their considerable energies to what I see as an agenda that will help solicitors,' he says.'How is limiting the numbers coming in at the bottom of the profession going to help? The people who take the largest number of trainees are firms in the City.

Are they training them to compete with solicitors who do domestic conveyancing on the high street? 'Show me anywhere else in economic history or in the history of business where that kind of crude cap has ever brought prosperity.'Mr Baker agrees with the President that there are too many LPC places, but instead of cutting them he hopes to persuade the LPC institutions to be more restrained in selling their vocational courses to students who do not have a realistic prospect of becoming solicitors.'I do not believe you can achieve this agenda by control, regulation and prescription,' says Mr Baker.

'All that will achieve is to put the Law Society on a collision course.

You cannot control numbers, but you can educate expectations.''The working party gives us a marvellous opportunity for debate in the profession as a whole,' he says.

'The legal profession worldwide must face the issue of over-capacity and not just look at it from the point of view of entrance at the bottom end.'The way to become competitive in this environment is, according to Mr Baker, continuously to train everyone in a law firm from the secretary to the senior partner.'We all have careers in a solicitor's office,' he says.

'Even the receptionist has a career.'Mr Baker wants this training to become more flexible and dynamic.

He says that much of the work done in a solicitor's office does not need to be done by solicitors.

He vigorously rejects the suggestion that learning advocacy on the legal practice course is useless if the student in question is going to spend most of his or her career as a conveyancer.'Trainee solicitors are not going to end up doing domestic conveyancing,' he says.

'They have been prepared for a much more demanding job.

'Routine conveyancing should be delegated to people who are skilled and trained but have not necessarily qualified as solicitors.'Mr Baker believes gradations of training should be introduced into law firms.

He thinks it is a problem that in the legal profession the only half-way house between all and no qualifications is the job of a legal executive.Mr Baker's Bristol firm, Veale Wasbrough, recruits 'trainee legal advisers' -- the new chairman does not like the term 'paralegal' -- alongside trainee solicitors.

One of his current legal advisers has completed the LPC but has been unable to find a training contract.Mr Baker says this is one way of dealing with the surplus of LPC graduates.

He wants to see training resources more closely matched to the needs of solicitors' offices.'As chairman, I want to stimulate into existence partnerships between the practising and the teaching professions,' says Mr Baker.

'I want to see partnerships between small and medium-sized firms who could pool their resources for training.'Mr Baker believes the thrust of this training should be towards the business world and, ultimately, information technology.