Law Soc in line of fire on Clementi reform claims

The Law Society is being pressed to make an embarrassing climbdown following a decision by a breakaway group of council members to write to Sir David Clementi to contradict the president's statements on legal service reform.

A group of about a dozen council members, led by the member for Yorkshire Philip Hamer, are preparing a letter to Clementi stressing that the society's decision-making council has not agreed to split in two - despite statements to the contrary from president Ed Nally.

Following a council meeting in September the society issued a statement saying that the council had "signalled that governance of representation would be separate in future". The stance was underlined by Nally in his keynotes speech at the society's annual conference earlier this month.

However, the council had actually looked at a number of differing models for reform and agreed to come up with a plan some time in the New Year after Clementi publishes his report.

Hamer's letter - which was being drafted as Legal Week went to press and is expected to reach Clementi's desk at the beginning of next month - will stress that the council did not make any decisions and will not do so until next year.

The move threatens to undermine the media push by the society to portray itself as a modern, pro-reform body, a stance which is generally regarded as having the best chance of influencing the outcome of any Clementi-derived reforms.

The review of legal services regulation, which started last year, is expected to recommend substantial reform when it is completed at the end of the year, with the Society's regulatory track record coming under particular scrutiny.

The letter is expected to claim that trust between the society's executive and its decision-making council has reached an all-time low, with a number of council members believing that the president and chief executive Janet Paraskeva are pushing the society down a route that could be damaging for the profession.

"It is absolute folly to commit ourselves to anything until we know what Clementi has to say," Hamer said.

"The executive are saying different things in different places and the key thing is that it leads to a withdrawal of trust."

A Law Society spokesman said: "The president wrote to Sir David Clementi to let him know of the council's decision in September. We are confident that that letter has the full support of the overwhelming majority of council members."