We all know that there is an absolute prohibition on the publication of any of the activities within a jury room.

A rather less stringent prohibition is placed upon scrutineers and tellers in elections for both local and national government.

The electoral activities that have convulsed the Law Society recently included arrangements for the count.

This included a declaration of secrecy that was required of all those present -- candidates, scrutineers, tellers, Secretaries-General, and all.

Despite that, it is now possible to disclose some of the activities of that memorable day.And memorable it was, if only because while the air temperature in central London appeared to climb towards 100 degrees fahrenheit, the humidity level accompanying it approached 100%.

Fortunately the count took place in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal court room at 60 Carey Street -- a solid old building with thick walls and no windows.

Light is admitted to the court room via a circular clerestory which has opening fan lights, enabling all the hotter air to escape, and cooler (or less hot) air to enter the room at a lower level.The day started after we had all signed the declaration, with a description of the procedure to be followed by the chairman of the scrutineers, Dudley Lewis, Bristol's city solicitor.

He, and one other of the five scrutineers, had had substantial experience of the running of elections for local, national and European governments, and this count was going to follow the proper procedure.

And it did, thereby confounding one local law society which had formally resolved at its AGM that it had no confidence in the ability of the Law Society to run a satisfactory election, and which had had the temerity to send a copy of its motion to The Times and other media!At 10am the ballot boxes were opened.

We had three elections to count, as the Surrey constituency was electing a Council member, and the presidential and vice-presidential elections had to be dealt with entirely separately.

The procedure was that the envelopes -- all of which had been, on receipt, put into ballot boxes unopened -- were passed through the letter opener.

The opened envelopes were then passed to the tellers, who took out the contents.And here the fun started.

It is quite extraordinary what membe rs of a respectable profession will do to their voting papers when electing their leader.

First, despite the quite clear instructions that papers had to be received by the Society by 6 July -- three weeks or so were allowed for the vote -- nearly 200, or 1% of the voters, managed to post their votes so late that they were received on 7 July or later.

The postmarks showed that the vast majority of those had actually been posted on the closing date.

There may be a case about a communication being deemed to be received on the day it is posted, but I had a feeling that that had something to do with offer and acceptance, and little to do with electoral law.Approximately 50 papers in both presidential and vice-presidential elections were unsigned -- this, despite instructions on both parts of the ballot papers, in type larger than all the rest of the text, that both parts of the paper had to be signed.

There was also a further reminder on the outside of the envelope that one would have thought could not fail to be seen when it was sealed.

Some secretaries, who know their principals well, had highlighted the reminders on the ballot papers!Solicitors also manage to be as ambiguous when voting as in their professional lives.

Examples included putting crosses in all boxes; putting one cross carefully so that its interception was exactly on the dividing line between two boxes; and covering the ballot paper with crosses.

We also had to adjudicate on a paper with a tick against one candidate, and a cross against the other.

The rules provide, as is common in all elections, that one puts a cross against the favoured candidate.Amazingly, there were 250 'no votes'.

I find it quite extraordinary that anyone feels that any impact will be made by sending a nullity, whether in an election, or in any other transaction.

People really should understand that their voting papers are counted, rather than read, and that additional comments, such as 'Neither, thanks!'; 'None up to the job'; and 'Not impressed' are seen only by a humble counting assistant.It was not just ballot papers that emerged out of the envelopes.

Solicitors (some of them) are quite parsimonious, and used the reply paid envelope to send a variety of correspondence to the Law Society.

I do hope that it was not all urgent, as some of it will have lain, unopened, in a ballot box for nearly three weeks before being read.

Among the interesting items included in the voting envelopes were notifications of change of address and of the decease of a solicitor -- all of these were faithfully passed to the correct department; requests for further details on video conferencing, the members' bar, the grill room, and the restaurant; an Ian Rush football sticker; an imitation vote for John Redwood in the election for leader of the Conservative party; a customer survey form completed by the satisfied purchaser of a Laing house; a note from a lady QC about the contents of her dressing table; and a completed entry form for the pregnancy and birth Silvercross competition.At the end of the day some 50,000 votes in three elections were opened, checked, counted and stored away for a short period before being destroyed.

There were, as always, complaints about the voting papers having to contain the name, address and signature of the voter.

These complainants are clearly worried about a possible lack of secrecy.

They need not be.

Apart from the declaration of secrecy signed by all those at the count, candidates were carefully kept in an area where they could not see the details on the voting papers.

But i t is essential in all elections, if there is a serious challenge, to be able to unravel who has voted and who has not.

It is for the same reason that, in municipal and general elections, the number on the voting paper issued is recorded against the voter's name on the marked copy of the register.

Without those safeguards it would be all too easy to cheat at election time.So far as we were aware -- and we were looking out for it -- there was no evidence of the block voting that had been feared.

And I can happily confirm that there was no truth at all in the rumour that the Law Society's staffs' votes all came in the same envelope, filled in in the same colour ink.Finally, which images really stand out? John Hayes, with his sleeves rolled up, helping to sort votes when it appeared that time was passing too quickly.

The attempts to assess the relative size of the heaps of voting papers for the different candidates as the count proceeded.

The extreme good nature of the Law Society employees, despite soaring temperatures, who had been press-ganged into the most boring of jobs in an election.

And the nervousness of the candidates that sometimes expressed itself in different ways as the hours passed.It was, in a way, a rewarding day.

Irrespective of the result, there is a huge satisfaction in undertaking a job such as that, and seeing that it is completed, on time, and efficiently.

My only fear is that it might become an annual feast.