The Gazette 1973

the duty is not one imposed by the law of tort but arises from a contractual obligation existing between the client and the particular solicitor or firm in question This was an action by the plaintiff, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, against the defendant, Mr. Oscar Albert Beuselinck, who was a solicitor, claiming damages for negligence on the ground that he had failed to give her the advice which he ought to have done in relation to her entering into a contract with literary agents for the publication of her life story, thereby involving her in liability to tax. URGED AS ment of Justice. "It's like trying to get blood out of a stone," he said. "When we went to the Department repeated letters received no answers at all. When we went to the District Court in Cork for information on juvenile cases they were not prepared to help either, possibly because they were afraid their jobs might be placed on the line. We have not been able to get reli- able figures for the District Court sessions when cases involving children come before the Distirct Justice. However, although information is not forthcoming from official sources, a rough estimate finds the number of children passing through the District Court in Cork to be between 350 and 500 a year. This can be broken down into about seven to ten new cases each week but we have not been able to discover how many of these were professionally represented." Need for law reform Discussing the need for law reform, Mr. Murphy said that such reform was hindered by the fact that the people who were affected by the faulty areas of the law were not in a position to go to a solicitor and as a result many solicitors lacked expert knowledge of these particular areas. He agreed that there was no doubt that the legal profession was reluctant to advocate law reform, although they were the people who knew the law. "Lawyers generally tend to administer the law as it exists," he said, "and the legal profession in Ireland is a very introverted one, with the people most likely to go into law being the sons and daughters of solicitors and barristers." He foresaw a crisis in legal education if there was a sharp increase in the number of people wanting to be apprenticed to solicitors. Under the Irish system of education a solicitor could only have two apprentices at a time, and no-one could begin the course without being apprenticed. "The numbers taking law at college have in fact been increasing because of the education grants but a university degree does not make you a professional lawyer unless you also go either to the Kings Inns or to the Four Courts. It is a long and anachronistic system." He added that in many firms in Cork, however, the student had merely to pay the apprenticeship fee, ranging from £300 to £1,000—and need not attend the office for the five years of the apprenticeship. Some solicitors required no payment at all, but those who took high fees usually demanded attendance as well. The Irish Times (3rd April 1973) 128

petent? I am speaking not merely of those expert in a particular branch of the law, as contrasted with a general practitioner, but also of those of long experience and great skill as contrasted with those practising in the same field of the law but being of a more ordinary calibre and having less experience. The essence of the contract of retainer, it may be said, is that the client is retaining the particular solicitor or firm in question, and he is therefore entitled to expect from that solicitor or firm a standard of care and skill commensurate with the skill and experience which that solicitor or firm has. The uniform standard of care postulated for the world at large in tort hardly seems appropriate when

NEW LEGAL A ID SYSTEM START TO LAW REFORM

by MARY LELAND The urgent need for a comprehensive scheme of free legal aid and advice in civil and criminal cases in Ireland was stressed by members of the Free Legal Advisory Bureau in Cork yesterday at a conference to introduce its annual report. The bureau is operated by law students from UCC, who are now pressing for a meeting between the Minis- ter for Justice and the three F.L.A. centres, in Cork, Galway and Dublin. Introducing the report, which deals with the many areas of activity of the bureau in Cork, Mr. Finbarr Murphy, B.C.L., criticised the existing legal aid scheme in Ireland and he indicated other areas in the legal system in which reform is urgently needed, beginning with that of legal education itself. Under the existing system legal aid in Ireland was available only for criminal cases, Mr. Murphy said, and only covered representation in the Courts where the defendant was judged to have insufficient means to afford independent representation, and where the Court thought it essential in the interests of justice because of the gravity of the charge or other excep- tional circumstances. "It is always essential in the interests of justice that a person be represented in Court," Mr. Murphy said. "We feel that the criteria under which the system is applied are restrictively interpreted by the Courts, and we would urge that these two provisos be dropped altogether. We consider it unjust that the granting of a Legal Aid District Court Certificate should be the final and unappealable decision of the District Court, and we also criticise the fact that under the Criminal Proce- dures Act of 1967 preliminary hearings are excluded from legal aid, except in cases of a charge of murder. As preliminary hearings are a critically important stage of a criminal procedure this restriction is unjust." Because most people were unaware of the existence of the scheme, Mr. Murphy said, a person being arrested or charged should be told immediately that they could have free legal aid. He also urged the extension of the scheme to cover civil cases, and he pointed out that the retrictive nature of the present system was in fact hindering the process of law reform, particularly in those social areas where it was most needed. Lack of information deplored Dealing with the work carried out by the Cork bureau, Mr. Murphy said that they had found it impos- sible to obtain essential information from the Depart-