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I found this all very interesting reading. I had no idea that Council is composed of 100 members - this is to me at least clearly ludicrous in terms of a body that is supposed to govern. Looking at the Law Society website for the first time in many years, I see that there are also ' around 300 volunteer board and committee members' in addition to the 100 members of Council. Outstanding. I am amazed that anyone has time to actually get anything done, with the amount of meetings that must have to take place to fill the time of those 400 people. Or perhaps that is rather the issue at stake.

Looking at what the purpose of the LS actually is, it sets out four items (1) providing support, advice and guidance on areas of practice and management (2) supporting equality, diversity and inclusion within the legal profession (3) campaigning on legal issues of importance to our members and the public (4) acting as the approved regulator for solicitors.

I'm pretty sure that the SRA is the regulator, at least they've been billing me all this time for my practising certificate, so discount (4). That leaves (1) support for the profession, which is an ad hoc service easily fulfilled by hiring the right people and letting them get on with it (2) supporting equality and diversity and inclusion (see previous comment) and (3) campaigning on legal issues.

I'm not really sure why we as solicitors need 400 people in governance to fulfill those three objectives. If we were planning to set up a colony on Mars, fine, I appreciate there is a degree of complexity.

But here, I think we just need to get a grip on reality before we lose the relevance of our profession in its entirety. I appreciate a number of battles in this arena have already been lost - whether a better run LS could have won those battles is a moot point. But clearly a poorly run, overly bureaucratic and change resistant LS lumbering along in a period of enormous change is not going to go out and bat a particularly good innings for its members, assuming it even makes it to the stumps before sunset.