Law talk is banned at the Harper family Christmas table in Glasgow, and a good job too.

Father, Ross, has just reached the pinnacle of the worldwide profession as president of the International Bar Association.

He has a daughter at Clifford Chance, one son with Slaughter & May and another doing a law degree.

One mention of legal practice and the turkey would never be carved.But at all other times, 59-year-old Ross Harper is more than willing to chew over international legal practice.

More than 30 years ago he launched his own Glasgow firm, which now has 22 partners and 12 branch offices and is one of the largest north of the border.A former Law Society of Scotland president, three-time unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate and current senior partner at Harper Macleod, Mr Harper readily admits that his new IBA post can be anything the incumbent makes of it.

'There is a full-time IBA staff so you could become an absentee president, write a letter a day and send it by fax.

Or you can jump in and enjoy it.'Clearly Mr Harper intends to take the latter option.

His reputation is one of a high energy, shot-gun approach to problem solving.

'He has a lot of ideas,' said one international lawyer, 'and he is not reluctant to put them forward.'Mr Harper is in the process of moving down to London in order to devote most of his week to IBA matters, commuting back up to Glasgow to tidy up firm's business at the weekends.

And indeed, there is sufficient work on the cards to make heading up the association a full-time job.

Mr Harper is already focusing on expanding the IBA's growing human rights role.His main concern is that the IBA takes practical measures to tackle human rights violations instead of being little more than a moaning talking shop.'I take an in-depth view of what an organisation can do about human rights,' says the new president.

'It is not just a question of looking at individual violations of human rights, it is looking at how those violations could ever take place.'Over the last two years, the IBA has begun an ambitious programme of sending observers to study pre-trial and trial procedures around the world.

They started with some of the obvious black spots - a report is due out on Malaysia - and have graduated to some less likely territory.For example, an IBA team has just completed a study of trials in Japan.

While the Far Eastern economic miracle is not normally associated with human rights abuses, Mr Harper points out that the Japanese criminal justice system produces a conviction rate of some 99%.The IBA report, produced by an Australian Queen's counsel, also strongly condemns other aspects of the Japanese system.

Mr Harper will send it to the Japanese government and he is bracing himself for a frosty reception when he travels to Tokyo next February.But there is no question of a British lawyer heading up a London-based group focusing attention purely on problems a long way from home.

Mr Harper expresses a commitment to tackle issues which are closer to the European bone, such as detention policies and other basic human rights matters throughout the EU.Globally, the IBA is embarking on a study of the independence of bars around the world in an attempt to establish bench marks for developing countries.

'We are not the only people [campaigning for human rights] but it is a drip-stone effect.

I represent 2.5 million lawyers; that is a formidable force.'It has not always been so.

The IBA began 47 years ago, primarily as an international lawyers' club, providing an excuse for the wealthy in the profession to meet in an exotic venue once or twice a year.Over the last decade or so, its image has changed dramatically as the association has increased its developing-world membership and taken a more active approach to the practical problems of legal practice internationally.Indeed, it has come to the point now where those dealing in international legal affairs consider the IBA to be a crucial and heavyweight player.

One commentator gave the association particularly high marks for its efforts in bringing together EU lawyers with their eastern European counterparts after the fall of the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc.To a large extent, the IBA's growth has greatly been down to the outgoing executive director Madeleine May (see [1994] Gazette, 27 April, 11), who organised a membership drive which brought the roll call up to 167 countries.Perhaps the main professional issue facing the association is one which is especially close to the hearts of European lawyers: rights of establishment under home title.

The IBA is gearing up to wrestle with this highly contentious matter next June at a conference in Edinburgh.Although IBA officials have worked closely with the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of the European Community on the establishment question, Mr Harper recognises that his organisation is in a slightly more precarious position.

Many of its wider membership - especially the developing countries - 'are understandably highly protective.

It is a very delicate matter for the IBA.'One less controversial area in which Mr Harper would like to see the IBA take a lead is international cultural law.

The association is currently working on a survey of all the museum contracts around the world.

'Every one is different and every one in its own way is probably faulty,' says Mr Harper.Ultimately, he wants the IBA to produce a standard 'culture contract' so that 'a museum in London borrowing from a museum in Paris can use a standard form'.All this means there is plenty to keep Mr Harper occupied over the next two years of his presidency.

But, if he ever finds himself at a loose end, he can turn to the consortium he is currently leading which is in pole position to take over Scottish Coal.

Perhaps privatisation talk should also be banned from the Christmas table.