The Gazette 1972

Row over Young Lawyers' Union in England

and invited him along to tell them how to go about setting up a trade union. Brandishing a fistful of successful actions on behalf of solicitors in industry, Jenkins told them that setting up a trade union was "an act of faith." This alarmed the Law Society which suspects Jenkins' intentions. The official view of the articled clerks' action is that they are receiving training which will quickly take them into the upper middle-class earning bracket, and that until they are trained they are a net liability. The clerks claim that by carrying out lucrative conveyancing work for their employers they make a profit for their offices. The threat to withdraw the Law Society's help was given by William Brown, chairman of its Education and Training Committee at a later meeting with the clerks. Dennis Gordon, secretary of Holborn Law Society, Britain's largest local group, said : "This trade union issue is not very real. If they set their sights too high they will price themselves out of the market and the future training of the legal profession in this country will break down because solicitors will not be able to afford clerks. "It is true that the clerks doing conveyancing are engaged in profitable work, but no self-respecting solici- tor uses his clerk purely for conveyancing. They are given a legal training and that is what costs the money. "In my own area office rents are £6 a sq. ft. That is enough space to stand your waste paper basket in. Articled clerks take up more space, of course, and they cost money for additional services. These are the sort of factors that ought to be looked at." (,Sunday Telegraph, 12th December 1971)

Britain's trainee solicitors are in revolt against their employers. An attempt by them to register as a trade union under the new Industrial Relations Act has brought a threat by the Law Society, representing their employers, that it will stop employing trainees as "articled clerks", and will stop any help it gives at the moment to them. The Law Society's threat is aimed at the clerks' Associate Members Committee. This represents their interests within the Law Society, which itself theoreti- cally represents both solicitors and their clerks. It also administers the training programme for articled clerks, runs their qualifying examinations, and contributes £2,000 a year to help with the committee members' travelling expenses. The clerks are also trying to negotiate with local law societies to persuade individual employers to pay á decent basic wage to clerks. One society settled on a rate of between £3 and £5 a week for a beginner. "That sort of thing is ludicrous," said Rodney King, chairman of the Associate Members' Committee. "Al- though, to be fair, some employers pay a reasonable wage, the trouble is that there are far too many law graduates, many of them married, working for £7 or £8 a week." The decision to register as a trade union was taken by the 25-strong National Committee which represents some 9,000 trainee solicitors. The first application for registration is blocked by a constitutional point, but the committee think they can overcome this by emend- ing the constitution. Last week the situation was complicated by the entry °n the scene of Clive Jenkins of the ASTMS. The articled clerks booked a room in the Law Society Hall

FIRST IRISH EXAMINATION In the November 1971 Gazette , at page 152 of volume 65, amongst candidates who passed the First Irish Examination in September 1971 the following is the correct name of the following candidate: Martin, Celine Mary. The following additional candidate should also have been inserted : Meagher, Aideen Mary.

29