When Janet Paraskeva takes over the helm of the Law Society as its new chief executive on 2 October she will arrive at an organisation which many would argue is crying out for radical change.

The reformers maintain that if the 175-year-old Society is to retain its relevance to solicitors and its ability to regulate the profession, then it must consider the creation of a more representative council, its structure of corporate governance and the way in which it handles complaints.The urgency of this issue will not have been lost on Ms Paraskeva.

She attended her first council meeting a fortnight ago, when the main topic of debate was Law Society reform (see [2000] Gazette, 21 September, 1).

Fresh from that debate, Ms Paraskeva gave this exclusive interview to the Gazette.Q: Why the Law Society? What intrigued you about the chief executive post?A: What attracted me most was that there was a management job to be done -- to have the chance of coming into an organisation that has existed for a long time and helping that organisation to bring about the reforms that it needs, to modernise it and to bring it into the 21st century, and to be able to do that with a profession that I have the utmost respect for and have come across in a number of different walks of life is a great privilege.

To be able to bring my management skills to a profession that I will enjoy working with is a great opportunity.Q: A year ago, what would have been your impression of solicitors?A: What I would have thought of solicitors a year ago is much the same as my view now.

I have been a magistrate for the last eight years and have had to deal with solicitors in that capacity.

I've witnessed solicitors acting for clients as duty solicitors or on legal aid -- acting for clients who really needed their services and who couldn't pay for those services and who sometimes didn't even know that they had the right to a solicitor in court.

So I was able to see what the profession is trying to deliver in that regard.Generally, my view of solicitors comes very much from a human rights/civil rights background.

That for me is an important issue.Q: Is there an image problem for the solicitors' profession?A: Yes.

And, like most image problems, it is born out of a position of not knowing -- the public doesn't know of the best work that solicitors do.

What they read about most often is the high salaries that some solicitors earn, and about the things that go wrong.

Bad news makes stories.

Good news rarely does.One of the jobs for us at the Law Society is to produce some of the good news about the work of solicitors.

For example, that might mean solicitors who deal with straightforward, honest conveyancing, which often gets a bad press because you mostly only read about the difficulties in that field, as opposed to the many clients who are well supported by their solicitors.And the public also needs to understand the importance to the country of the increasingly profitable commercial and City solicitors.Q: What can the Law Society do to change that generally negative public perception of solicitors?A: In one way that can be done by raising the public profile of the Law Society itself.

For instance, recently we have seen the launch of www.solicitors-online.com.

There are many people who currently don't realise that they can get, very economically, advice and support from solicitors.

This is a service that the Law Society provides that will help people to know that solicitors are there to be called on.I like the way that the old Legal Aid Board -- the Legal Services Commission -- has taken itself to the streets, as it were.

I know there is a difference of opinion among legal aid lawyers regarding the numbers of lawyers allowed to practise in the field under the new structure.

But nonetheless, those solicitors who are to be involved are going to be very important street-front businesses for some of the poorest and neediest people in the community.

If we promote solicitors who work in this way we can shift the balance so the public doesn't just see the press stories about the high salaries but also sees something about the very different kinds of work that lawyers are involved in.Q: Does that mean an element of marketing is required?A: Absolutely.

It means not simply waiting until somebody says something and then being on the back foot defending, but actually telling people about what we've got on offer.

It would be lovely to see billboards promoting the Law Society's e-mail address so people would be able to contact us.

But first we must make sure we've got the structure and resources in place to deal with it, otherwise we would be flooded with telephone calls and e-mails that we couldn't handle.

So there is a job of work to be done for the Law Society -- creating a ten-year plan with some five-year targets.Q: What about the Law Society? What would your impression have been a year ago?A: I suppose I saw it as more the representative body -- the trade union -- for solicitors.

But I also knew from the recent press history of some of the difficulties it had been encountering regarding complaints.

I have learnt since that it provides all kinds of services of a different nature.Q: Before joining the organisation formally, you spent some time at the Law Society.

In your view, what needs fixing?A: Firstly, some of the things that need fixing are not new and are about corporate governance.

And the council has already begun to address some of those issues.

The kinds of reforms that the council is talking about have implications for structural reforms of the way in which we manage to deliver what the council wants.

Any organisation needs to review its corporate governance from time to time.Secondly would come the ability to measure and demonstrate success -- the Law Society has not been very good at that.

In the short time that I have so far spent with the staff and with council and executive members, it has become obvious that there have been some clear successes, but in terms of performance management, nobody's charted them, nobody's demonstrated them and certainly nobody has sung about them from the rooftops.

For example, the Society's information service is much valued.Thirdly, the Law Society needs a modernised structure.

It needs a management structure that is as flat as is possible and led from the front.

That means setting goals for improving customer relationships and methods for achieving them.

You don't get that in a five to 10-year plan without taking a mind-set leap into how you should be communicating with your various different customers -- in this case, the public, solicitors and stakeholders, be they the government or financial institutions.Q: Can the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) be saved? Can it meet the government-set targets?A: It is saving itself.

I have spent a bit of time in Leamington Spa, and indeed I've listened in on complaints and I have followed through what happens to a complaint.

I have also looked at the ways, under Jim Waggstaff's leadership, in which the OSS has brought in management information systems that can predict the kind of processing time that is needed for different kinds of complaints.

He has already introduced the single point of entry for all complaints; he has already differentiated service complaints from conduct complaints; the time for handling a new complaint that comes in is well under three months.

That is pretty good by any standards.However, what he has also inherited is a backlog from 1998 that will have a tail with it.

He has a dedicated team looking at the backlog, but backlogs, by their very nature, take a long time to clear .

But I am confident that the systems he has in place can meet near as dammit, if not absolutely, the kind of targets the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) has set.Q: How do you perceive the role of chief executive at the Law Society? Will there be increasing policy involvement for you?A: To begin with, there is a serious management job to be done.

One of the things I was keen on during the interview process was the debate about a mandate to do the job.

I see the chief executive's role as having a mandate to carry out the council's wishes.

It is the council's role to set the strategy for this organisation -- to say what it wants to happen.

It is my job to make sure that it does happen and happens properly.Increasingly, that will take one into policy areas, even if at the beginning it means saying: 'If that is your policy, council, these are the operational consequences.' And before council takes a policy decision, I would hope to ensure that the proper operational considerations feed that policy.

But increasingly that approach takes one into preparing policy ideas with council members.

Policy and operations are inextricably linked.Q: Is self-regulation something the profession should fight to retain? Is it worthwhile trying to maintain the delicate balance of running both a representative body and a regulatory body under one roof?A: The job for us at the Law Society is to try to strike a balance between proper lay and consumer control within a body that tries to balance regulation with representation.

There are things to learn from both sides that will benefit both sides.

But we must find a way that persuades not just the LCD but the general public and the associations that represent consumers of legal services that indeed there is a proper service in place for them that will bring redress.

And that it is not about solicitors hiding the mistakes that small numbers of their profession make, but it is about solicitors encouraging lay people and people from other professions to help them make sure that their professional service is delivered as best as possible.Q: You're not a lawyer.

Is that an advantage or a disadvantage?A: No, I'm not a lawyer, I'm a manager with considerable managerial experience.

What the Law Society said it wanted was a manager.

That doesn't mean that I won't be surrounded by lawyers.

The Society employs very many lawyers.

I bring something different.Q: Do you intend to get out and about among the profession?A: Very much so.

I believe in keeping in touch and taking services closer to the customer.

The Law Society already has a network of regional offices and I would be interested in talking to local law societies about the type of work they do might do with -- or indeed for -- us in future.Q: What do you bring from your past experience that will benefit the Law Society?A: Public sector accountability.

The public sector is often knocked, but actually one of the things that it does very well is hold its staff and its boards accountable.

Issues such as management performance and internal audit that analyses performance against achievable targets -- these are the kinds of things I will bring from my experience.Q: Following its recent debate, what is your interpretation of the council's mood regarding reform at the Law Society?A: It is an urgent matter, but it must not be so rushed as to miss the proper consultative mechanisms.

I hope the consultation process will be unleashed in a fashion which allows us properly to bring back in the views of the people involved.

It must be as broad as possible and it must be organised and structured so that we can take account of the things that people say.

All too often consultation means sending out a paper with anybody who bothers to reply being able to reply in any fashion.

We need to structure for the responses if we are really going to know what the majority of people who chose to reply actually want to say.

We might also need to set up some focus groups to achieve that in a more structured fashion.

There can also be electronic consultation -- this is the year 2000.Q: What is your reaction to the broad shape of the proposed reform package?A: The corporate governance suggestions sound sensible.

I have some sympathy with those council members who have questioned whether the council should get even bigger.

But I don't have any concerns about a council only meeting four times a year and properly delegating its functions to an executive body.

That is ordinary business.

The executive body would report back to the council and council members would have the opportunity to be involved in the boards set up to oversee the management of the strategy.Q: Can the Law Society maintain an appeal to all sides of an increasingly disparate and diversified profession?A: I very much hope so.

One must recognise the differences and the value of those differences.

And then one must look at the similarities.

But by recognising the differences, the Law Society might be able to develop the different types of services that those different groupings need.And by recognising the similarities, one can bring together a collective strength that the different kinds of solicitors' practices represent.JANET PARASKEVA: A PROFILEBefore coming to the Law Society as its chief executive, Janet Paraskeva, 54, has had a wide ranging career in various areas of public or quasi-public service.Immediately before her appointment she was the director for England of the National Lottery Charities Board, which she joined in 1995.Prior to that she was the chief executive of the National Youth Bureau.

She has also served as a magistrate and as a member of the Home Office's Youth Justice Board, which was established two years ago to revise the youth justice system in England and Wales.Among Ms Paraskeva's other appointments have been: council member of ChildLine; member of the OFSTED standing consultancy group; and chairwoman of the British Youth Council.