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time- basis or on a consultative' basis. This
report
if
adopted by the Council will take some little time to put
into operation but it is hoped that it will be adopted
and that it would be in operation before the commence
ment of the new year. There are two problems arasing :
one is the recruitment of suitable staff and the provision
of office space; the other is the financing of the operation.
The committee estimate an additional revenue of £8,000
to £10,000 would be required. If satisfied that the pro
fession is quite willing to pay for a service so useful as
this should be and that the additional finance should be
found by way of an increase in the subscription to the
Society which has not been altered since the Society was
founded. Our subscription of course is very much out of
date. In England the fee
is thirteen guineas; Scotland
£14-10-0; Northern Ireland six guineas; Germany £9
to £27; Netherlands twelve guineas; Norway £10 to
£23, and Sweden £12 to £48. It is probable if the
finance is to be obtained from an increase in subscrip
tions that an increase of £10 would be suggested.
I
hope at the next half yearly meeting to be able to put
more concrete proposals in this regard before you. It is
also hoped that when the Accountants Certificate provi
sions are working properly that it will in the near future
be possible to reduce the Compensation Fund Contribu
tion still further, it has already been reduced from £40
to £30.
REGIONAL MEETINGS
While the information service will supply a flow of
information out from the Society to the profession there
is inadequate communication from the members of the
profession of the Society. This is not satisfactorily sup
plied by the members of the Council, there are very
large parts of
Ireland, particularly in
the West and
South, which send no member to
the Council at all.
This, in my view, is a great defect in our organisation
and one which needs to be remedied.
I have myself
during
the past six months visited most of
the Bar
Associations in Ireland with the hope that I might dis
cover some method of filling this hiatus and while I am
satisfied that this type ol operation fulfills the immediate
purpose for which it was intended it is not a suitable
permanent arrangement. I would suggest as a permanent
arrangement that regional meetings would be held in
various parts of the country in each year to which the
President and some other members of the Council and
the Secretary and his senior assistants would attend. A
broad agenda should be prepared but the meeting should
be allowed to range over every subject without restric
tion. It should be possible to arrange the country into
six regions at most which would mean six meetings a
year. This would not place undue strain on anybody and
it would give the Council on the one hand an oppor
tunity
to explain
its current policies directly
to
the
members of the profession and the members of the pro
fession, on the other hand, to express their views, criti
cisms and particular problems to the Council.
OFFICE ORGANISATION AND EQUIPMENT
It is felt that solicitors are at a disadvantage in many
cases through a failure to provide themselves with a well-
organised office, properly equipped with modern aids
and techniques, thereby resulting in
loss of efficiency,
economic advantage and excessive use of their own pro
fessional time. In many cases, particularly in small firms
they have not the time to stand back, as it were, and
study this matter. Besides for the most part they are not
by their training particularly well qualified to deal with
this type of thing nor are they well informed about the
relative suitability of their particular office of any indivi
dual item of equipment from the wide range of these
things now on the market. It would therefore be a great
advantage if a firm with such problems were able to
call on expert advice in
these matters. The Council,
therefore, will have
to
investigate
the possibility of
establishing a specialised service of
this nature which
would be available to
its members. This idea can be
regarded only as
tentative because
the service would
have
to be self financing and having regard
to
the
narrowness of the market it might not justify the expense
of
its establishment. The proposal will, however, be
most carefully investigated.
PROFESSIONAL NEGLIGENCE INSURANCE
For some years past the Council has been concerned
with the difficulties solicitors are experiencing in obtain
ing professional negligence insurance at reasonable pre
miums or indeed at all. You will recall that a survey was
done some years ago by way of questionnaire as a pre
liminary to a group insurance scheme. Unfortunately up
to the present time all efforts to get quotations have
failed but in the last few months there has been some
glimmer of light in a suggestion that a quotation might
possibly be
forthcoming
if
the group
included every
member of the profession. The Society has, of course, no
statutory means of enforcing a solicitor to become a
member of a group insurance scheme and indeed it is
quite possible that many members would not want to
join such a scheme for one reason or another. The only
way of enforcing a subscription to the scheme would be
to make it conditional on membership of the Society to
be also in the group scheme. This, however, would have
the effect of forcing a person who wanted to continue
to be a member of the Society and yet did not want to
enter the group scheme to leave the Society and that to
my mind would be very undesirable. The Council are
thus pursuing with their brokers certain other proposals
but it must be realised that the matter is a very difficult
one and I think there is no certainty that concrete pro
posals will be available. Members should continue
to
keep whatever cover they have until the Society has a
group scheme actually in existence if that in fact ever
does occur. A group scheme would have one side advan
tage in that the Society would then have access to the
statistics showing geographical location of the claims and
the more frequent types of mistakes which led to them
and possibly be able to take some remedial measures by
way of an information service.
LAND REGISTRY CONVEYANCE
This subject has been a cuase of great concern and
anxiety to the Council and indeed to the whole profes
sion for almost twelve months now. Numerous discus
sions have taken place including some at
the highest
possible level. I had an opportunity to meet the Minister
for Justice very shortly after he took office and discuss
with him certain general problems affecting the profes
sion including this matter in particular. At that time the
Minister had not had an opportunity of examining in
detail the many matters awaiting his attention. He did
say that he considered the Land Registry a very impor
tant part of our legal machinery both from the point of
view of
the public and
legal profession. He
intends,
therefore, to pay an early visit to the Registry to discuss
the whole machinery with the Registrar and his executives
and will take the opportunity of this visit to the Regis
trar to discuss
in detail
the implications of a
recent
circular issued by him, a copy of which I gave
the