Large numbers of so-called “sole practitioners” have gone out of business since the start of the recession. Twenty-five per cent of those that remain are said by the Society to earn less than pounds 10,000 per year, once they have paid certification charges, indemnity insurance and other substantial sums demanded by the Society. Then the scale and the monopoly were both abolished, but house sales soared so solicitors continued to prosper, even though charges continued to fall. But when the recession hit, the realisation dawned that the profession of gentlemen, its privileges hacked away, was set to become pauperised.If you want to offend Martin Mears, try using the expression “fat cats” It makes him livid And you can see why. Until the mid-80s, solicitors had a monopoly of conveyancing work, and prices were fixed according to a scale of fees.

If so, it will be the first time such a thing has happened in the society’s 150 year history.Mr Mears is the voice of the small high street lawyer, dependant largely on bread and butter work like conveyancing, for whom the past few years have been a catalogue of disasters. Last year, in the first presidential election the Society had held for 40 years, he became the organisation’s titular head.Unlike earlier incumbents, Mr Mears has at his present rate of progress as much chance of getting knighted as you or me: but he stands a considerably better chance of being elected president for a second year, which is what he wants. If the new regime at the Law Society had its way, conveyancing charges for the work solicitors do when people buy and sell property – which, with deregulation, have fallen steadily over the past 10 years – would rocket back to their former levels.The smiling, rubicund man at the heart of this unprecedented farrago is a lawyer with a practice in Great Yarmouth called Martin Mears, who stormed in from the backwoods two years ago and got himself elected on to the Society’s ruling Council (having first established that this could legally be done – until then, nobody had presumed to try). At the heart of the wrangling is the question of how much lawyers should charge. “It’s doings read more like a soap opera than real life,” declared the Legal Action Group News in disgust. Key staff have left, most recently the head of public relations, after a bitter public feud with the president.

The citadel has already fallen, but out in the sticks even more bloody-minded radicals are plotting, bent on severing the organisation in two.
All this excitement impinges on the outside world for two reasons. First, nobody can resist a bareknuckle brawl, and when all involved belong to a profession as feared and loathed loathed as lawyers – why, it’s second best only to watching the National Association of Estate Agents going up in smoke.But there is another reason for paying attention. It was a fitting culmination to a twelvemonth of genteel flesh-pressing and throat-clearing and exercising of ceremonial functions, all within the splendidly pompous purlieu of the Society’s headquarters at the bottom of Chancery Lane, guarded by a large number of small, gilded, effeminate- looking lions, perched on posts. The purlieu is as pompous as ever, the lions gleam as bright.