The Gazette 1972

lawyer—again subject to proper control—was passed

by 24 votes to 14, and the right of the foreign lawyer to

engage in contentious business and even to appear in

Court—but only if the rules of the local Law Society

so permitted—was passed by 34 votes to 3. But the

conference was most insistent that bearing the public

interest in mind, a foreign lawyer must be qualified to

give the services he offers and conforms to the generally

accepted standards of legal ethics and professional

conduct operating in that other country.

These and other recommendations of the U.I.A. will

be circulated by the International Bar Association to all

Law Societies, and by us to our own Bar Associations.

It would be a useful service for all of us to take a good

hard look at these proposals and to examine them not

in any self-interested way, but from the point of view

of the public whose interest we are here to serve. Indeed,

looking at these proposals from a purely selfish point

of view, it occurs to me that it might be wiser for us to

liberalise our existing rules and regulations while we still

have time and before foreign lawyers establish them-

selves here under the protective facade of an office

ostensibly run by one of our own members.

Duty of Lawyers to the Law

Speaking on the Duty of the Lawyer to the Law, Lord

Goodman recently referred to the extraordinary picture

we lawyers have of ourselves—as men of some learning,

of tremendous integrity, of above-average intelligence

rather like the Pharisees in the Gospels—and he con-

trasted this with the very unfavourable picture the

public appears to have of us, most of it, in his opinion,

largely due to our own fault. Are people slow to bring

their troubles to us? Do they bring them just that little

bit too late because of the fear we may unwittingly

inspire in them ? Do we talk down to our clients

making them feel just that little bit inferior

to the elite that they now have the honour to

consult, or do we treat them as friends whose

troubles we are glad to share? Do we talk to them

in language they can understand or do we try to impress

them with our knowledge that may be real or only

imaginary? If the Rule of Law under which our Society

operates is worthy of our allegiance and support; if no

blue-print for an alternative system has so far been

placed before us, and if we feel that the legal systems

operating.elsewhere is not to our liking, then it is up to

us to ensure that what we treasure shall be brought up

to date in every respect so as to meet the demands of

our Community and that we who operate that system

earn the Community's respect.

Keeping pace with modern conditions

A lawyer dying in the year 1872 and miraculously

restored to life in 1972 could, without undue strain on

his revived constitution, sit at the same desk as he sat

at 100 years aga and cary on his legal practice more

or less where he left off. Telephone, type-writer, dicta-

phones and other impedimenta of the twentieth century

might cause him a certain amount of confus

on for a

time, but on the whole, he would experience little diffi-

culty in recognizing the same pattern of conveyancing,

probate and Court practice that he was used to carrying

out a century ago. We are as essential to our clients

io-day as he was in his day, but one is entitled to ask:

Have we kept pace with the 20th century, or are we

dherng to a mode of administering the law more suit-

able to a more leisurely age? What have we done in our

time to speed-up the administration of justice or get rid

of anachronistic formulae? Are we bringing the process

of the law within the reach of every individual, or is the

righting of wrongs still the privilege of the man of

property ?

Legal Aid

In this respect it is depressing to find the Minister

for Justice saying in Dail Hireann recently that

while free Civil Legal Aid is a worthy Social Service

Scheme, there is little hope for its establishment in this

country until the demands of more worthy welfare

schemes have first been met out of the limited resources

at the disposal of the Government. Ready access to

legal advice is the right of every citizen if the Com

munity's respect for the law is to be maintained. Tradi-

tionally, lawyers in this country have rarely failed to

give of their services free to those who could not afford

to take the necessary steps to have their wrongs put

right, and the Free Legal Aid Centres established some

years ago in Dublin and run by our senior students is a

happy extension of that tradition. I was very glad to see

a tribute paid to them recently by the Minister for

Justice, but I am completely at a loss to understand

what the Minister implied when he expressed the hope

that the Incorporated Law Society would help in a more

active and more official way than by just having a few

individual solicitors helping out. These young students

of ours in the period between April 1969 and July 1971

dealt with over 1,000 cases in the five centres they have

established in Dublin, and when problems arose that

necessitated expert legal advice—or where Court pro-

ceeding wree necessary—they were immediately able to

call upon the services of those members of our Society

who are on the panel to give them this expert advice or

institute and carry-out the necessary Court proceedings

entirely free of charge. In commending them for this

work, the Minister went on to say that the Incorpor-

ated Law Society should officially give its blessing to

this Organisation, and try to arrange—with our younger

qualified members at least—that this type of service

would be available throughout the whole country. Let

there be no misunderstanding about the Society's

attitude to this important matter. These young students

and those members of our Society who so willlingly

give their services free of charge to the poorer sections

of the Community have been praised and thanked by

my predecessors in office over the years for this exercise

of theirs in the practice of Christian charity, and I most

happily join with my predecessors in again thanking

them for attempting to carry on, under severe handi-

caps, a service which is primarily the duty of the State

to provide. A free civil legal aid service carried out on

a Nation-wide basis and staffed by our newly-qualified

Solicitors and our senior students is a first-class idea,

but where is the vast amount of money that is needed

for such a scheme to come from? The Minister has

placed one room at the disposal of the existing organi-

zation in this very building, but cannot promise even

an annual subvention for it until it is extended through-

out the country. I trust that the Law Society is not being

asked, through the generosity of its members and

senior students, to provide a Nation-wide service for the

State free of charge? In the latter half of this century

there has been an extraordinary awaken

ng of the social

conscience of our people and what was heretofore given

as a sop to the poor, has come to be regarded as one of

their inherent rights. As lawyers, we should be quick to

read the signs and urge for the implementation of what

we regard as the just and proper demands of the

Society we live in. Who can now deny that the poorer

sections of our growing urban communities need free

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