No business can remain successful without considered investment in both its infrastructure and the development of its product and services.In this respect the Law Society is no different, yet in recent years it has failed to secure the funds necessary to sustain or develop the multiple roles of regulation, representation, and law reform it plays on behalf of the solicitors' profession.The Law Society raises its money in three ways: the practising certificate fee, other professional fees and through commercial activity.Over the past 10 years, as you might expect of any growing business, the Law Society's gross expenditure has increased -- in fact from £38.8 million to £68.7 million.

Over the same period, the number of solicitors holding practising certificates has also increased from 57,167 to 84,564.Therefore, in 1991 the Law Society spent £680 per practising certificate holder.

In 2001, we will spend £813, an increase of 19.5%.

But with an increase in the retail price index of 30% in real terms, less is being spent now than it was in 1991.

We have just not kept up.

Small wonder then that the proposed hike in the practising certificate fee looks so sudden, but it is vital.One of the main functions of the Law Society -- and one sometimes forgotten by those who ask 'what does the Law Society do for me?' -- is to act as the regulator for the profession.The Society controls entry to the profession, sets the rules in consultation with the profession, monitors standards against those rules, handles complaints and intervenes where serious misconduct is found -- in about 100 firms a year.It also operates a compensation fund for clients whose solicitors have stolen their money.It is a costly business, but at least it is one at the moment still owned and governed by the profession.

To lose that privilege -- and acceptance of three resolutions being put to the annual general meeting this month would herald, if not trigger, the end of that privilege -- would be a critical loss.

It would also give to the government, or to any instrument the government might establish, full control of the profession and at a cost the government would dictate.Self-regulation is not a right.

The government has increasingly warned of its role as the final regulator.

In Scotland, the Parliament has just established a major new enquiry into the regulation of the legal profession.

In England and Wales, under-resourcing of part of the Law Society's regulatory role led the Lord Chancellor to place an order under section 47 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 setting out the purposes for which the practising certificate fee might be used.

That order covers the duty of regulation, but excludes the funding of representation.

And the practising certificate fee cannot simply be reduced by trimming back complaints-handling in the way suggested in the resolutions before the AGM.

Such action would breach the duties of the Society in law.The Law Society's budget for 2002 will show an increase, an increase which simply seeks to put right the recent under-investment in the activities the Society carries out on behalf of the profession.

The goal of the Law Society is to promote solicitors as an independent and effective self-regulated legal profession.

To meet this goal it must set a practising certificate fee at a level that can demonstrate to the public and to government that it can do so efficiently and effectively.Even now the practising certificate fee is subsidised by commercial income raised by the Society's other activities, activities which will need to thrive further in order to support the Society's role promoting the wider interests of the profession.