If, as a solicitor, you dirty your bib good and proper, chances are you will meet Chris Heaps in less than convivial circumstances.

A rebuke from Mr Heaps, who is chairman of the adjudication and appeals committee of the Solicitors Complaints Bureau, includes a warning that you have come within a whisker of being packed off to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.In the rather quaint hierarchy of rebukes prescribed by the solicitors' profession, a chairman's rebuke is as serious as it can get short of a referral to the SDT.

Just say, for example, that you have been unwise enough to express yourself in blue and bellicose terms in correspondence with the other side.

It is an evens bet that you will be summoned to the bureau for a lash of Mr Heaps' tongue.'It's a good old-fashioned telling off,' says Mr Heaps, but he goes on to stress the gravity of it: 'The solicitor is warned that, if it happens again, he is for the high jump.

It really is scaring the pants off him and I think it works.' He doled out 11 rebukes in 1993.If the transgression is not so serious as to warrant a wigging from Mr Heaps personally, the solicitor gets a rebuke by letter from the bureau.

Persistent failure to respond to correspondence, for example, will earn such a sanction.

Big deal, you might say.

So I get a brickbat from the bureau - so what.

But it goes on your record - like an endorsement on your driving licence - and, to give just one example, it could scupper your chances of a seat on the Bench.Mr Heaps believes that few solicitors would be cavalier about receiving such a rebuke.

'There will always be a small minority who would not be affected by anything like that, but I think that in the vast majority of cases it is a sanction which people do not wish to suffer.'If you break the professional rules but do so unwittingly, you will be in line for a deprecation.

Despite sounding more damning than a rebuke, a deprecation takes the form of a mild enough letter from the bureau regretting what has happened and hoping it will not again, etc.Being in the sanctions business, the adjudication and appeals committee is never going to have preferred body status with solicitors.

But Mr Heaps feels there has been a marked change in the profession's perception of the committee in recent years, and he attributes this to the escalation in default and the consequent steep rises in contributions to the compensation fund.'Ten years ago, [the then committee] was perceived as jackbooted Nazis from the Law Society.

Now, pressure on the compensation fund means that we are getting complaints that we are being too soft.' So is he too soft? Is his committee?'We are not here to walk all over the profession with jackboots.

And we are not here to mollycoddle the public.

We are here to see the rules are properly enforced and to pay out of the fund where loss has been suffered.

I hope we are fair,' he says.Mr Heaps points out that the lay members of the committee (there are ten) tend to be significantly more sympathetic to the black sheep than the solicitor members.

However, overall he believes the committee gets the balance right and this, he says, is reflected in the outcome of High Court challenges to its decisions.

Out of eight such challenges last year, five were dismissed and three have been carried over to this year.The first tentative sign that the default tide may be ebbing is apparent in the figures for 1993.

The value of claims is down by a third from £58.3 million to £39.3 million .

Mr Heaps has his fingers crossed, but there is no complacency; his committee authorised payments totalling £23 million last year.He attributes the surge in default in the 1980s to 'greedy solicitors, greedy clients and greedy lenders' all operating in a climate of laxity where security checking was often non-existent.

The bills for this orgy of greed are still coming in.

And the cost to the profession in money terms and in lost face has been exceedingly high.The committee responds to tip-offs of possible trouble at a firm by sending in an accountant to inspect.

It is traumatic for the firm, as Mr Heaps readily acknowledges.

But he believes the results - irregularities show up in about 50% of cases - validate the policy.Where a serious breach of the accounts rules is found and clients' money is in jeopardy, an intervention takes place.

This effectively amounts to shutting the firm down, although efforts will be made to keep it running by selling the goodwill to a local solicitor.As far as interventions go, the committee is often perceived to be readier to shut down sole practitioners.

'The reason', says Mr Heaps, 'is that in partnerships you can make sure the money is protected.

A sole practitioner with control of the cheque book cannot be controlled so we have to step in.'His experience on the committee has taught him that amongst the 0.01% of dishonest solicitors, there are few really clever schemers.

'What surprises me is that, in the majority of cases, I do not think the solicitor could ever expect to get away with it for ever.

More often than not, when the inspectors go in the reaction we get is: "Thank God, you've come.

I knew this would happen some day and this is a great relief."'Mr Heaps believes the opportunities for fiddling are few enough, given the detailed nature of the accounts rules.

'It is very difficult to hide things if the accountant does his job properly.' That said, he acknowledges that there are no checks whatever that could stop a solicitor making off on a Friday afternoon with vast quantities of client money and a one-way ticket to somewhere unpronouncable.For solicitors who would rather never meet Mr Heaps other than socially, he has a few words of advice.

'Honesty and a nice apology where something has gone wrong nine times out of ten will defuse a situation.'