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cent in conveyancing scale charges on trans
actions from £4,000 to £20,000.
(v) That conveyancing scale charges should be
abolished for transactions over £20,000, the
charges in respect of such transactions being
under Schedule II instead.
(vi) That lessees' solicitors' scale charges should
be equated with
lessors'
solicitors'
scale
charges.
(vii) That a solicitor acting for both vendor and
purchaser should, so long as the practice of
acting for both parties is allowed, be entitled
to charge not more than one-and-a-half times
the scale charge for acting for one party.
(viii) Solicitors' scale charges for conveyancing,
should normally be treated as maxima leav
ing a solicitor free "to go below the scale if
he so wishes"—freedom which the Board
state "is now largely denied him under the
rules of local law societies".
Solicitors who have not already done so, should
read the report itself (the text is only twenty-eight
pages long); they will, furthermore, find its illum
inating statistical supplement, which takes up an
additional thirty-six pages, a fascinating study. The
object of this article is to put the Board's report
in perspective, to point out certain aspects of it
which may well be the subject of criticism by the
Council
(who are at present considering what
representations to make) and to report such action
as the Council have already taken.
The Report in Perspective
It would have been difficult to envisage a more
misleading headline than the one which appeared
in a popular newspaper on the day after the report
was issued : "Dismissed—Solicitors' Case on Fees".
The fact of the matter was that the Law Society's
claim that there should be increased remuneration
for three sectors of solicitors' work had been found
by the Board to be justified even
though the
Board did not accept the full amount of the claim
in each case. The findings were, in other words,
at least a partial victory for the Law Society—
though this could well prove to be but a Pyrrhic
victory if the reductions in charges for certain
other sectors of solicitors' work which the Board
have suggested are brought into force and under
cutting scale charges are encouraged.
Solicitors' earnings were referred by the govern
ment to the Board because the Council had sought
increases in solicitors' charges for county court
work and for acting on the grant of leases; and
after the government had decided to refer the
matter to the Board the Council also added a
claim for an increase in the lower reaches of the
conveyancing scale. The Board recommended some
increases
in
respect of each of
these heads—
though considerably less than what the Council
were seeking for leases and for county court work.
It is important to remember that the report has
of itself no binding authority and it is open to the
government to accept it in whole or in part—and
equally open to them to reject it. Furthermore,
when
referring solicitors'
remuneration
to
the
Board, the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs
and the Lord Chancellor specifically treated the
Board's investigation as a preliminary step "before
the Law Society's detailed proposals for increases
in charges are considered by the Statutory Com
mittees"—i.e. by the committee set up under Sec
tion 56 of the Solicitors Act, 1957, in respect of
conveyancing costs and by the County Court Rules
Committee in respect of county court costs. The
current position is that the Lord Chancellor has
stated orally that he does not propose to call a
meeting of either of these committees to deal with
the Law Society's claims (or with the recommen
dations of the Prices and Incomes Board) until the
government have decided whether, and if so to
what extent, they will adopt the Board's report.
He has in the meantime invited the Council to
submit to him such representations regarding the
report as they may think fit, so that these may be
taken into account by the government in arriving
at their decision.
Whatever may happen as a result of the specific
suggestions made by the Board for present changes
in solicitors' charges, it should be noted that the
final paragraph of the report raises a far reaching
and long term question. Is the profession to be
more-or-less permanently subject to periodical re
views of their remuneration (perhaps every two
years) by the Prices and Incomes Board? The
Board suggest that the government should make a
standing reference to them under Section 3 of the
Prices and Incomes Act, 1966, under which the
Board may be instructed "to keep under continuous
review any question concerning all or any of the
incomes or prices or charges or other matters" to
which that Section applies. They have since then
given an indication of what this would amount to
in practice. The Board say that in their view the
main need in the foreseeable future is information
on the movement of gross and net earnings and
they suggest that this might be provided by solici
tors without great trouble, if notice were given to
them in advance and the information provided
when they next prepared their annual accounts. If
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