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law from a lawyer, and his specialised accountancy
from an accountant. No longer does he seem to
require a single confidential relationship with his
man of business. It is accepted that the "Man of
Business" relationship is still found in the country
districts.
How then will
lawyers be organised
in
the
future? It seems clear that in the cities and major
towns there will be large legal offices with twenty,
thirty or more partners and possibly an equal
number of associate partners or trainee solicitors.
There will, of course, be the appropriate number
of secretaries and typists, but such non-qualified
staff as presently assist in many large offices may
disappear. Some of the work may be done by
retired people. Staff may well be organised on a
shift basis to allow for a four-day week. Within
these very large offices there will be a high degree
of specialisation. Clients will be attracted to the
firm partly because of the respect which each
individual partner commands in his own sphere of
specialisation and partly because the firm itself
will command respect because of the high degree
of efficiency which it can offer. It may be that the
present scale of fees will have to be adjusted so
that specialisation will be encouraged, allowing
only mass volume work producing a high-grade
product at a relatively low cost to be undertaken.
Such vast law firms would be able to afford very
expensive mechanical aids. Through time,
they
will own their own computers and, if they do not,
they will certainly "hire time" on available com
puters. To thrive, such large firms will have aggres
sive,
imaginative and
forward-looking policies.
Efficiency will be at a premium.
At present some of the larger firms have attemp
ted to specialise. Certainly the staff in such offices
have specialist functions. Is it not wise for those
who have found specialisation difficult to require
individual partners to concentrate their reading of
case law and journals on certain subjects? Such a
plan would gradually lead to a degree of special
isation and, once started, the trend would be for
junior partners to be assumed because of their
skill in a particular technique.
As the vast chain stores have not ousted the
boutique, neither will such vast law offices oust
the specialist sole practitioner. He may well choose
to concentrate on one particular area of law. He
may be a pleader; alternatively he may concen
trate on international law; on taxation; on plan
ning; and he may prefer to do so on his own or in
the company of one or two others rather than as a
partner in a massive organisation. If such lawyers
are not specialists and if they endeavour to prac
tise the whole ambit of the law, it seems doubtful
if they will be able to attract substantial business.
A few such solicitors may exist but they will be
men of exceptional character and ability.
It is wrong to suggest that a specialist partner
in a large firm will fail to enjoy a close and confi
dential relationship with his client and will be
unable to act as a general adviser and assister in
the making of decisions. Of course, he will be
able to fulfil these functions if he is a man of
common sense and personality. If he is able to
command respect as a person he will have just as
useful a relationship with his client as did the
man of bus: ness. Is it ever suggested that a char
tered accountant does not enjoy a close relation
ship with his clients? And if he is able to com
mand respect it follows that he will be able to
help out his client with general business and
personal advice with his normal specialist function.
Clearly the large firm described in the foregoing
paragraphs will not exist in the country districts.
The "Man of Business" type of solicitor may sur
vive in these areas longer than in others, but it is
possible that even in the country districts he will
disappear, eventually being replaced by an asso
ciate partner or partner of one of the larger firms.
It may become possible for groups of solicitors to
form limited companies, and one can visualise
country solicitors as shareholders in these larger
firms referring their more specialised problems to
headquarters and making use of the equipment
and resources which they, in the rural area, could
never afford. There will be other groups of solici
tors, such as those in local government; and al
though there is a possibility that the town clerks
and county clerks may eventually be replaced by
"town" and "county managing directors", never
theless it is clear that, with the increasing com
plexity of legislation, each administrative area will
require a
large staff of qualified solicitors. To
achieve the necessary economics of scale,
these
solicitors will also organise themselves in groups,
thus achieving the special : sation which we have
already talked of. Similarly the nationalised indus
tries and the large corporations have set up and
will expand their own
legal departments. The
large corporations will get larger and their legal
departments, again highly specialised, will deal
with all but the most exceptional of the company's
problems. Here is yet another sphere in which the
work available for the private practitioner will
diminish.
[This paper ;uas delivered at the Law Society
of Scotland's Study Weekend at St. Andrew's,
22nd-23rd June 1968, and it is published by the
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