The Law Society's ability to represent City lawyers has again been called into question after it emerged that Chancery Lane failed to respond to a major Government consultation with the excuse that it "cannot respond to everything".

The Law Society, which has an annual budget of more than £100m, did not make the deadline for replies to the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) consultation paper early last month on the future of US-style class actions in the UK.

The Law Society initially put the lack of a response down to the fact that it could not respond to every government paper, but subsequently claimed that it had not received notification of the consultation. It has since written a letter informing the DTI of its views on the main issues raised.