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GAZETTE
N W
JUNE 1993
President briefs half-yearly meeting of
the Society on current issues
At the Annual Conference of the Law Society were l-r: Andrew Smyth, Council
Member and Chairman of the Solicitors' Benevolent Association, Philip Joyce,
Council Member, and Laurence Cullen, Past President of the Society.
In his address to the half yearly meeting
of the Society held on Thursday, 20
May, 1993 in Furbo, Connemara, at the
commencement of the Law Society's
Annual Conference, the President of the
Society,
Raymond Monahan,
dealt with
a wide range of issues of current
concern to the profession. The President
of the Society said the work of the
Society had expanded to the point
where there was now in excess of 30
committees. The Council and its
committees were broad ranging and
were reasonably representative of the
profession as a whole in terms of age
profile, geographical location, firm size
and the type of work carried on by
them.While a great effort was made to
communicate with the profession, there
was a perception amongst ordinary
members that the Law Society did not
represent them in terms of their views
or their interests, therefore, he intended
to make greater efforts to promote the
message that the Council and the
Society are available at all times to be
of service and assistance to individual
members of the profession.
The President of the Society updated
members on the progress on the
Solicitors (Amendment) Bill and said
that the opportunity presented to the
Society to the lobby further on the Bill
had been fully optimised.
He expressed concern about the
continuing increase in the numbers who
wished to enter the profession and the
Í fact that the Law School's resources
could not continue to deal with such a
| huge throughput. It was for these
reasons that he had initiated a special
review of admissions and education
policy and he was now examining the
report of the review committee.
Solicitors remuneration was also an area
of concern, he said, and a recent survey
of the profession conducted by the
Costs Committee indicated that many
solicitors were not charging sufficient
fees to pay their overheads and provide
themselves with a basic standard of
living. "We have now reached the stage
where, if the public wishes to have an
accessible and conveniently based
profession, it will have to become more
conscious of the cost of time and
overheads so as to enable the traditional
ethos of the profession serving everyone
to continue," he said.
In his address to the half yearly
meeting, the President of the Society
also criticised the fact that, every year,
further layers of bureaucracy,
regulation, procedures and tax collection
duties were imposed upon solicitors,
while the institutions solicitors had to
work with were being denied the
necessary resources to allow them
progress and develop as they should in
line with modem needs, Resources
needed to be poured into the civil legal
aid system and into the proper funding
and organisation of the justice system,
he said, and he suggested that the
judicial commission proposed in the
Partnership Programme for Government
should be a wide-ranging and broadly
based committee comprising not only
judges but also barristers and solicitors,
as well as registrars, court clerks and
concerned outsiders.
He was also very critical of the new
probate tax proposed in the Finance
Bill, 1993 saying the tax was unfair,
indiscriminate and would cause huge
legal difficulties for the public while
yielding very little financial advantage
to the Government.
He read to the meeting a press statement
issued by the Society that day criticising
the proposals by the Minister for
Commerce & Technology,
Seamus
Brennan TD,
to place a cap on the level
of personal injuries awards. He said the
Minister's approach was too narrow; it
was wrong to seize solely upon the
compensation element in the total costs
of the insurance industry and to argue
that it alone should be reduced. A much
broader examination was required.
There were dangers inherent in
selectively adopting legal provisions or
rules from other jurisdictions without
looking more generally at other aspects
of the legal system in those countries
and especially at the employment and
social welfare codes that apply to
people who suffer injuries. He said the
Law Society and the legal profession
would be seriously concerned about any
move that would interfere with the basic
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