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GAZETTE
N EW
S
NOVEMBER 1996
New President: Frank Daly
Frank Daly
Not everyone gets to realise their
childhood dreams, but Frank Daly
did - and now he's at the top of his
chosen career. Conal O'Boyle talks to
the new president of the Law Society
Frank Daly is one of the lucky ones: he
grew up to be what he always wanted to
be when he was young. While other
children dreamed of being soldiers or
fire engines, young Frank's mind turned
to the law.
'Since about the age of ten I wanted to
be a lawyer', he says. 'I never wanted to
be anything else. It never even occurred
to me to be anything else'. After a stint
in University College Cork where he
got his BCL, he spent a year with the
Law Society in the Four Courts. He
qualified in 1966 and immediately
returned to Cork to take up a place in
his uncle's firm.
Of course, things were a little different
back then. For a start, there were only
760 solicitors in the whole country. 'I
would think that I got to know well over
half the profession', he says,
'particularly through the Society of
Young Solicitors' meetings which I
didn't miss for about ten years'. These
days you'd have to know over 3,000
solicitors if you wanted to make the
same claim - that's a lot of pints
after work.
When his uncle and the other partner
died within months of each other in
1972, Frank was left holding the baby,
so to speak. 'I was only 29 at the time
and felt I was too young to be running a
practice on my own. We had some
fairly serious clients, and I felt an older
figure would help'.
He didn't have far to look for a mentor:
in 1973 he amalgamated with Edmund
Hayes, his next door neighbour on
Cork's South Mall. 'We literally broke a
big hole through the wall!', recalls
Daly. A year later he amalgamated with
John Ronan and Nicholas Comyn. Daly
Hayes then became Ronan Daly Hayes.
A further merger in 1982 saw the firm
renamed Ronan Daly Jermyn. With 13
lawyers, it is now one of the biggest
commercial firms outside Dublin.
Perhaps one of the more surprising
revelations about qualifying during the
swinging sixties is that everi^back then
people were telling Frank Daly not to do
law, that there was no living in it. That
will sound familiar to today's
apprentices. 'The good lawyers will
always make a lot of money,' Daly
argues. 'But it's going to get harder for
the smaller firms unless they are very
good. There is still room for the good
one-man practitioner who is available to
his clients, who communicates with
them and does his job well - and there
always will be. Many sole practitioners
have made an excellent living out of
the law'.
Specialisation is another way of
ensuring that business will boom. 'If
you become a "boutique lawyer," as
they're referred to in the UK, and just
do one subject such as licensing or tax
or patents, you'll absolutely fly'.
Apart from an explosion in numbers
entering the profession, there has also
been an explosion in the amount of law
that solicitors have to digest. While
criminal law is dominating the
headlines, family law is set to take
centre stage again when the divorce
rules come in. Then there is European
law. How does the incoming president
think the profession will cope with the
pressures on it?
'The profession will meet all its
obligations', he says. 'It always has -
and more. It's been providing a kind of
legal aid for years: it's been called "no
foal, no fee", which is now a dirty word,
but there are hundreds of plaintiffs over
the years who could not have employed
a lawyer except on the basis of the
lawyer getting a fee if he wins. In the
UK, only this year, they have
recognised that and have permitted "no
foal, no fee" cases where up to last year
it was prohibited'.
'There has been some minor abuse of
this regime by overcharging plaintiffs,
but every lawyer is entitled to be paid
for the work done and the risk
undertaken. The Law Society is very
active in stamping out overcharging,
and it is now under control'.
As president, Frank Daly will be trying
to steer the Law Society through what
could well be a turbulent year -
particularly with a general election
looming and the rash promises that
might bring. Daly has held a seat on the
Council for the last 20 years, and has
seen the Law Society grow and change
along with the profession.
'When I first started, the meetings were
held in the Solicitors Building in the
Four Courts. Over the years, of course,
the Society's got much bigger and
become very professional. It's had to,
with membership growing to 6,000.
This has imposed huge strains, but the
Society has met the challenges well'.
Among the goals the lists for his term of
office are: better communication with
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