At a meeting the other day, I was asked what exactly I had achieved during my first 100 days as President.

The answer I would like to have given is this: 'I have changed the whole culture of Chancery Lane.

The Master of the Rolls has agreed to an enforceable conveyancing fee scale.

The provisions effecting a substantial reduction in the cost of indemnity insurance come into effect next month.

The Law Society's budgeted expenditure for 1997 shows a reduction of 20%.

I have initiated a new era of peace, harmony, brotherly love and six figure incomes for all solicitors.'This, of course, is not the answer I can give.

No President could deliver on any significant scale within three months of taking office.

That would be so even if Presidents were endowed with plenary powers to rule by decree.

But, of course, they have no such powers.

To achieve anything at all, they need the support of the majority of the Law Society Council.

In practice, also, they need the co-operation of the bureaucracy.When I stood for election, I was well aware that my primary task would be to persuade Chancery Lane into new attitudes.

I always emphasised, also, that to do anything useful a President would need a two-year term.One Gazette correspondent suggested that I stop dissipating my energies and 'go instead for a single big issue close to the heart of the profession' (see [1995] Gazette, 8 November, 13).

He mentioned the Edge conveyancing initiative.To this suggestion, there are two replies.

First, both the Council and I are doing everything possible to restore an enforceable fee scale.

For this, we need the Master of the Rolls' consent.

The Vice-President has prepared a detailed paper which rehearses the various arg uments (public interest and other) and this will be submitted to the Master of the Rolls with a request that he indicate his probable attitude to a formal application.

The simple reality is that until the Master of the Rolls' thinking is known, we can make no further progress along this path.This is a 'single big issue' and we are pursuing it as vigorously as we can.

But I refuse to see my role as concentrating on one matter to the exclusion of all others.

The high street often forgets that 33% of solicitors in firms with annual gross fees exceeding £15,000 work in the City of London.

The City firms have their own concerns and preoccupations and it would be quite wrong for them to receive the message that the President was only interested in the worries of high street conveyancers.

It is possible to have more than one item on the agenda.Gravy trainChancery Lane has long been wedded to 'continuing education'.

It is a difficult concept to argue with.

Education is like fresh air.

How can you have enough of it?From 1998, all solicitors, no matter how eminent or aged, will have to accumulate their continuing education points.

There are no exemptions, not even for professors of law.The Continuing Education Practice Rules make a number of assumptions.

The first is that solicitors are like idle schoolchildren who cannot be trusted by themselves to keep up with legal developments.

It is then assumed that these idle schoolchildren can be made to learn through compulsory 'Who, after a few glasses of wine, is going to be receptive to an afternoon's instruction on the Inheritance Tax Rules or whatever?'course attendances, etc.

But exactly how, in default of powers to impose lines, detention, etc? The third assumption is that all these courses and lectures provide a more effective method of learning than simply reading one's Gazette.

To which my reply is, ha!At one full-day course I attended some time ago, wine was provided with the lunch.

This rather gave the game away.

Who, after a few glasses of wine, is going to be receptive to an afternoon's instruction on the new Inheritance Tax Rules or whatever?But behind every cloud...While solicitors have suffered from the recession, the continuing education providers have flourished and waxed fat.

But let them beware! No gravy train rolls forever.Presidential imposter?During the past few weeks, I have paid the courtesy calls usually made by an incoming President.The custom is to visit the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the Vice-Chancellor and the Head of the Family Division.All these visits involve penetration of airport type security screens.

These, I imagine, would hardly incommode a determined terrorist but they are pretty effective in irritating everyone else.

At the Lord Chancellor's, I had to remove (inter alia) my watch and house keys as these were causing the security devices to bleep: 'But I am the President of the Law Society visiting the Lord Chancellor by appointment,' I said.'Sorry, sir.

We've got to apply the rules to everyone,' came the reply.'What, even the Queen Mother when she makes a call? Does she have to turn out her handbag?''Well, sir, no offence but you might be an imposter.''So might the Queen Mother or even the Lord Chancellor himself...Oh well, never mind.'