The Law Society took a pounding in 1994.

The attacks came from an increasingly restive membership which goaded the professional body for toadying to the consumer at the expense of practitioners' needs.Chancery Lane was accused of not listening to ordinary practitioners on conveyancing, of unnecessarily adding to the regulatory burden with an anti-discrimination rule and of positively inviting the public to complain about solicitors with a high profile launch of the Solicitors Complaints Bureau annual report.At the same time, there was harsh criticism from the consumer lobby, notably the National Consumer Council, which rubbished the Society's complaints-handling system, recommending root and branch reform.It was a year which culminated in a ballot of members which had the strong flavour of a referendum about it.

At issue was financial compensation for the firms of the three most senior officers.

But the outcome - the recommended compensation was halved - served equally to put the boot in at Chancery Lane.The Secretary-General, John Hayes, acknowledges the disquiet in the profession which he attributes in large part to the debilitating effect of a protracted recession.

He also acknowledges the scope for significant improvements in how Chancery Lane goes about its task.

But ultimately, he says, the answers to much of what ails the profession lie with law firms themselves.He believes the secret of econ omic success lies in self-help, primarily in adapting to market conditions.

'Stop looking to the Law Society to turn night into day.

The influence the Law Society can have is marginal and the idea that the professional body is going to make or break you is naive.' At most, he says, the Society can play a navigating role, flagging up what is on the horizon and acting as facilitator.And Mr Hayes is confident that whatever else the Society can take the rap for, it cannot be accused of not warning the profession of big changes on the work horizon.

'Since 1987 we have been warning the profession of the sort of issues they were going to have to confront and what they were going to have to do to deal with those issues.'But a profession set in its ways proved far from receptive for a long time.

'Every initiative that was launched, there were those who said: "Oh dear, why can't we turn the clock back, this is more bureaucracy."'Now, midway through the decade, Mr Hayes sees the profession as roughly divided into three tranches with the role of the Society varying accordingly.

The first tranche is made up of a largely self-sufficient band of progressives - mostly the larger commercial firms.

'These are the ones who have found the answer and they need no further help from the Society to get there,' he says.They have taken on board modern management systems and are truly switched on to their clients' needs.

In relation to Chancery Lane, their sole concerns are to ensure that they are not held back by burdensome regulations and that as little as possible of their resources go to pay for the losers.The second and biggest tranche is made up largely of high street practitioners.

These are the ones who need a helping hand to manage their practices and, Mr Hayes detects, are now willing to take it.

Here the Society can provide practical help with roadshows and workshops aimed at equipping firms with the management skills to give them an economic edge.

In particular, Mr Hayes believes these firms need help with costing their services and encouragement to charge an economic rate.The third tranche, although a small minority, poses the biggest challenge for Chancery Lane and costs the rest of the profession dear in money terms and loss of good reputation.

In this bunch are the hopelessly disorganised, the producers of shoddy work, the generators of negligence claims and the outright defaulters.

'In the last resort the Society has to do something about these because when they go down they drag the rest of the profession with them,' says Mr Hayes.But what that something should be requires hard thinking at a time when the number of complaints going to the SCB is over 20,000 a year and sorting them out is absorbing about 35% of practising certificate income.With the very real prospect that the SCB's work could continue to grow, Mr Hayes believes the time has come for a fundamental review of how the profession polices itself.

And here again, he believes the key to cutting the bill lies largely with firms themselves.That key is the development of a fully fledged client care culture.

Mr Hayes remarks that despite the fact that it is now over three years since the adoption of a client care rule (rule 15), there is no evidence that a culture of client care has taken universal hold in the profession.

It is still the case that at the first sign of trouble, too many firms, particularly those whose partners are middle-aged and unschooled in modern management techniques, bundle their disgruntled clients off to the SCB.This, Mr Hayes points out, not on ly sends the complaints bill soaring but also causes firms to miss out on a big opportunity to listen, learn and improve - an opportunity exploited to profitable effect by the most progressive in the services industry.

'Rule 15 was not meant to be an intrusion on professional life.

It was meant to make professional life easier and I don't think that message has got through.'Not every complaint is justified and Mr Hayes has no difficulty in accepting that those who lose legal cases may see their solicitors as ready scapegoats.

Indeed, although it defies the cab rank spirit, he believes solicitors should feel free to turn away clients who display the tell tale signs of trouble from the start.

However, in relation to all complaints, justified or not, he believes the first and preferably last stop should be the firm.Local solutions are also the most appropriate, he says, for the 22% of complaints that come from within the profession.

Mr Hayes believes local law societies or some other local mechanism could dispense with at least 75% of these complaints, many of which do not refer to client matters but to issues such as advertising.As well as tackling complaints at source, Mr Hayes believes the SCB will have to become more selective about the work it takes on if costs are to be contained.

'If you have finite resources, you cannot take on more and more complaints.

You can make marginal improvements of productivity but you have to take a radical view.'A full examination of all of the options open to the bureau is now being undertaken by the Society's adjudication and appeals committee and the lay-dominated policy advisory committee.

But under one model framework devised by Mr Hayes, only cases where there was substantial evidence of misconduct would automatically be subject to a formal investigation.In other cases, solicitors would be given 28 days to provide an explanation to the complainant.

Failure to do so would trigger a finding of inadequate professional services (IPS) with a cost penalty of at least £250.The bureau's workload could also be contained if it declined to handle IPS matters where a full investigation would take up a disproportionate amount of resources or where the amounts at stake were so large that it would be reasonable to ask the complainant to use other avenues such as litigation, the taxation procedure or alternative dispute resolution.

Specifically with the latter in mind, the bureau could negotiate a new scheme with the Institute of Arbitrators or CEDR.Under the Hayes model also, the bureau's current title - much criticised by solicitors as effectively an advertisement for complaints - would be changed to something like the 'Client protection agency'.

The term agency would serve the useful purpose of describing more honestly the relationship between the bureau and the Law Society.Looking ahead to 1995 and beyond, Mr Hayes repeats that the winners will be those who get close to their clients, who really listen to what clients want.

'That is particularly important for those dealing with commercial clients.' The winners will also be those who take management seriously, treating it 'not as a bolt-on but as an aid to doing a better professional job'.And what of Chancery Lane? What does the profession expect from it? Mr Hayes repeats the limits of Chancery Lane's power and believes it may have been guilty in the past of not managing expectations efficiently.'There is a danger that we go into situations looking as if we have a solution already or a solution is around the corner when the reality may be that there isn't one or that what we can offer is significant, but essentially, slow burning with no instant effect.' Conveyancing, he points out is a classic case.

'Given that the Society cannot bring back scale fees and it cannot make people buy and sell houses at the rate they were doing in the 1980s, then you have to be pretty humble about what you can actually achieve.'This year, Chancery Lane intends to pull out the stops on behalf of high street practitioners.

There will be a programme of 'listening' roadshows and there are plans to provide practical help with basic issues like practice management, realistic charging and, possibly, assertiveness training for dealing with awkward clients.And a word for the critics: Mr Hayes invites those who are baying for fewer regulations to spell out exactly those rules they could live without.

Leaving aside the controversial anti-discrimination rule, he would like to test whether the profession is ready for a 'really radical revision with whole chunks of the rule book going out of the window'.To those who allege that Chancery Lane is bending over at the slightest pressure from the consumer lobby, Mr Hayes says simply: 'In 90% of cases what is best for the consumer is best for the profession.'The cost of practice in the future will hinge substantially on good work practices and good complaints handling at firm level, Mr Hayes points out.

But the profession will also have to consider whether the way it insures itself should remain the same.For example, the Solicitors Indemnity Fund is looking at the whole field of penalty deductibles for undertaking high-risk work or failing to carry out particular procedures.

'There is a radical agenda which says that the indemnity scheme should encourage good practice and [those who] do not follow good practice should get it in the pocket.' Mr Hayes doubts that the profession is quite ready for such a change.But despite still difficult times, research yet to be published by the Law Society points to considerable optimism within the profession for 1995 and 1996.

In general solicitors are hopeful both of more work and of improving their profit margins.'The job of the Law Society,' says Mr Hayes 'is to help the profession do that by offering practical support and by not kidding it that the Society can determine the profession's success.

It is practitioners and how they are perceived in the market-place that will achieve that.'