Democracy, Churchill once remarked, means the association of all, through the leadership of the best.

As I reflect on my eight years on the Council, after my defeat in the local election, the definition intrigues me.Is it a good definition? Is leadership the most important criteria, or is the association - the consensus - more important? Perhaps effective leadership can only exist with the association of all.

This means harnessing everyone to the goals of the leadership.

But if leadership means having a vision, creating an agenda and implementing a plan, does popular consent count for nothing? No, but leaders cannot or should not court popularity or pay lip service to the general opinion.

It is the eternal problem of all politicians, and most of them never manage to maintain a balance which resolves it.The Society is both a regulatory body and the provider of support to solicitors and their firms.

From time to time it is important to question whether this arrangement is desirable.I would answer that it is, for several reasons.

First, just to be a regulatory authority would mean that, as with all such bodies, it would become feared or hated, or both.

Secondly, it would mean an abandonment of the charter under which the Society has operated for over 150 years, and under which it serves to promote the law itself, the use of the law, and law reform.

If this is not done for solicitors by their own organisation to which most of them belong, it would be a cruel and senseless break from much of what the Society has stood for in the past.

Thirdly, others would see any 'rump' solicitors' trade union as just tha t.

The Society earns the respect of the government and the public because it acts in the public interest promoting the solicitors' cause with the authority that comes from being not just a trade association, but a responsible regulatory body, which can handle both its power and its responsibility.In the last decade the rate of change in all of our working lives has been rapid, and the pace is accelerating.

The Society has deployed considerable skills to analyse how this has affected our profession.This enables the Council to take the best decisions as to how to protect solicitors from the impact of rapid change, head off disasters, and help us manage the change process.

This is where the role of the Society's staff is critical.

A highly motivated and intelligent civil service must harness all the facts for and against any issue so that the elected decision-makers can make the best decisions.Indeed, it must be the duty of such a civil service to bring matters before Council members at committee level, or through the chairs of the relevant committees, when public debates or opinions of government or the civil service are pressing for change, and where they see pressure arising.

They must and they do watch and listen for signs of this pressure.The Society has become a proactive body and is no longer the reactive old war-horse it used to be.

The debates which this role engenders do not make life comfortable.

But professional and business life today is not comfortable and we must constantly ask questions of ourselves in order to keep ahead.

The market for legal services is competitive; so it is for the doctors in the new NHS structure, and for the opticians for whom deregulation arrived early in the 1980s.Everyone is aware of the dramatic changes in consumer awareness, expectation and demand.

This has led to huge changes in all of the service industries.

The pressure is all the more intense for those who obtain public money.

For us it is the receipt of legal aid, and the use of the court system.

The public pressure for scrutiny increases year by year.Debates on such issues are stimulated by a number of factors, but by no single group of people.The Council members make the policy decisions, and the staff implement them.

But, more importantly, the staff prepare discussion papers, develop the arguments, and assemble the material which enables informed and intelligent decisions to be made.

The most effective Council members have their own views and are able to marshall facts and arguments and use their extensive practical experience.

This provides a challenging and stimulating environment where intellectual argument is mixed into a cocktail of practical politics.In any one year there are a few policy issues which get beyond the committee stage to arrive at the Council.

There are none which arrive there without a consultation with the profession at large, or through the network of local law societies.

It is an essential part of the process for any major change in regulation or any policy initiative which is to affect the solicitor in practice.The Law Society's civil service is its staff.

It is a very valuable resource.

Used widely the whole mechanism can and has produced enormous benefits for the profession as a whole.

Talk of the staff running the Society is misplaced; talk of 'ivory towers' also misses the point.

Our profession largely consists of people operating in partnership.

I would suggest that this partnership is one of the most valuable of them all.