At the March meeting of the Law Society's Council we heard a speech from one of its most long-serving members.

He was due to retire from the Council on that very day.

Usually a retiring member would provide a contribution exuding a spirit of harmony and universal brotherhood.

On this occasion, however, the distinguished elder statesman took the opportunity to excoriate the attempts of the Vice-President and me to find a solution to the problem of cut-price conveyancing/claims on the indemnity fund.We had, it was said, wasted the profession's money on counsels' and experts' fees in the pursuit of what all the wise old heads on the Council always knew were mere chimeras.

There were no solutions along the paths adopted by the elected office-holders.

If there were, they would have been discovered years ago.

In its content the speech was standard stuff.

God knows, the profession had heard it all often enough before.

What was unusual was the overtly hostile tone.

Even more unusual was the reaction to the speech.It was greeted with open applause and hand-clapping.

Now, admittedly, I am quite new to the Council but I cannot recall any previous occasion when a speech was so applauded as opposed to being greeted with gentlemanly 'Hear, hears' and polite murmurs of approbation.Attitudes of this kind, I find genuinely baffling.

If one were only to look at the John Edge initiative and the extraordinary support it received it is clear that if there is one matter upon which the profession is united it is this: every possible route towards restoring the prosperity of high street solicitors should be thoroughly and vigorously pursued.

The Council will not be blamed for trying and failing.

But it will be condemned for half-heartedness and negativism.

It is astonishing that Council members should brush aside the aspirations of their constituents as mere children's fantasies.Out of tuneThis brings me (again!) to the culture of Chancery Lane.

At the last Council meeting the Vice-President and I found ourselves in a minority of two on a particular issue (admittedly, not an overwhelmingly important one).

When this happens some soul searching is inevitable.

Am I, after all, some kind of crank destined always to be out of step and out of tune with reasonable and right-minded people? It is only when I go out and speak to local law societies (which I now regularly do) that I am reminded that it is Chancery Lane which is a hothouse world of its own with assumptions, conventions and orthodoxies which are wholly at variance with those of the profession outside.How has this situation come about? The Council, after all, is (predominantly) an elected body.

Do not solicitors choose representatives in their own image? If not, why not? The key to the mystery may be found in the fact that in a Council of 75 members only ten are there following contested elections.

Of the remainder, 15 were in effect co-opted and the rest were returned unopposed.

Most Council members are unaccustomed to arguing their case in an hostile env ironment.A bad smellI continue to be uneasy about the case of the 'Gateshead list'.

Here, it will be recalled, a commercial enterprise obtained the names of accident victims which were then supplied to personal injury lawyers for a per capita fee.This practice does not, it seems, contravene the Law Society's professional ethics guidelines.

When the existence of the scheme was first revealed last summer it attracted a great deal of media comment (mainly hostile).

At the same time I received letters from practitioners on the lines of 'Surely, we have not come to this! Are we a profession or not?' The scheme is justified on the ground that accident victims are entitled to know what their rights are and the solicitors who communicated with them were doing no more than providing an offer of assistance which did not have to be taken up.

All this it true.

But old-style ambulance chasing can be justified on exactly the same grounds.A continuing theme of my public speeches and articles is that one distinctive characteristic of a profession is that it accepts responsibility for all its members and imposes high standards on them.

In return, the profession is entitled to ask for reciprocal privileges.

Now, of course, this argument loses force if in any respect a profession's ethical standards are perceived to be lower than or at variance with those of the general community.

This is the problem.

For the public, practices of the Gateshead list type have a bad smell whatever the theoretical justifications.RallySome 15 Council seats come up for election this July.

I hope supporters of the presidential/vice-presidential reform programme win all of them.

But even more important is that every one of them should be contested.

Now is the chance for all the malcontents to make the transition from murmurer to man or woman of action!