This week comes news of a very welcome development on the audience rights front.

Following a meeting between Law Society officers and the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee on legal education and conduct (ACLEC), the omens look good for a considerable smoothing of the path to be taken by solicitors aspiring to be advocates in the higher courts.If the regulations are changed in the way envisaged, the chances of many more solicitors appearing as advocates in the higher courts will be greatly enhanced.The Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 opened the door for solicitors to take their places in the higher courts as advocates.

But the passage of the Act was only a start and it took many years of painstaking negotiation by the Law Society to turn theoretical rights into a reality.

The negotiations, which eventually succeeded, were aimed at winning the endorsement of ACLEC and the four most senior judges for a training and testing regime.By any standards, the regime that was eventually agreed was tough.

Indeed, solicitor advocates who had taken the required training course and sat the exam could claim to be much more rigorously tested than barristers starting out.

But it soon became clear that solicitors were being deterred from taking up their extended rights by the height of the hurdles set for them.

For a start, the exam is regarded as very difficult.

The evidence and procedure tests have been described as 'far too hard' by the Young Solicitors Group, which has expressed alarm at the high failure rate, believing that this is a major disincentive to would-be advocates.

However, equally troublesome obstacles are the expense involved in qualification -- running at around £2300 -- and the requirement to show a specified number of 'flying hours' in the lower courts.

Large commercial firms have despaired of being able to meet this requirement, simply because their workloads do not involve the county court.

Many have indicated that but for this requirement, they would be getting on with training substantial numbers of their younger solicitors as advocates.

The proposals to introduce greater flexibility into the training and testing regime should go some way towards ironing out the problems.

It is to be hoped that ACLEC will indeed give these proposals the promised 'good reception' and that the changes can be implemented as soon as possible.The investment of time and resources in the campaign to win extended audience rights for solicitors demands a better showing than the small number of solicitors -- around 420 -- who have qualified as High Court advocates.

The Society is right to keep up the pressure for a better result.