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.