299 / 736
to undertake conveyancing at less than the proper
rates and who thus would in all probability be
economically unable to afford to give the client
more than a cut-price service.
Late Press Continued
The Board have clearly shown that they are op
posed to local minimum conveyancing scales : but
they do not appear to have considered Rule 2 of
the Solicitors Practice Rules 1936, as no mention
is made of
it. This rule against undercutting
(which makes it a professional offence for a solici
tor to obtain business by holding himself out as
being prepared to undertake work at less than the
standard charge) was made by the Council, with
the consent of the Master of the Rolls, after the
Master of the Rolls had been convinced that the
making of the rule would be in the public interest
in order to prevent cut-throat competition between
solicitors which, in
the depression of the early
1930s, had led to solicitors getting into financial
difficulties. It is to be hoped that the Prices and
Incomes Board's report will not be treated as a
reason for repealing Rule 2 of the Solicitors Prac
tice Rules, especially as it looks as if the Board did
not even take it into account when deciding to
recommend that solicitors should have absolute
freedom to reduce their charges below the proper
scale.
The suggestion in paragraph eighty-four of the
report to the effect that for work not governed by-
scale charges, solicitors should make a charge "re
lated to the time spent on the job" is not forward
looking—it
is
indeed retrograde. All solicitors'
charges used to be based solely on the time element,
but in 1882 this method of charging was, for very
good reasons, abandoned, in respect of convey
ancing, in favour of scale charges. Furthermore, in
1953, the time element was abandoned as the sole
factor to be taken into account in all other non-
contentious work; it was recognised by the Statu
tory Committee set up to regulate conveyancing
costs, of which the Lord Chancellor is Chairman,
that as, for example, is the situation in the United
States, many other factors besides time should also
be considered, such as the amount of money in
volved, the complexity of the matter and the im
portance of the matter to the client.
The suggestion that a solicitor should only be
entitled to charge scale and a half when acting
for both vendor and purchaser would, on building
estates, be an inducement to the purchaser always
to employ the vendor's solicitor. This would not
be in the public interest as the principal client in
such transactions is bound to be the estate devel
oper and there should be no financial inducement
to the purchaser to refrain from being separately
represented. Furthermore, neither the work nor
the responsibility are substantially decreased where
a solicitor acts for both parties. If the only alter
native to this reduction
in charges
is
to stop
solicitors acting for both parties in a conveyancing
transaction (and if it is to be stopped for sales
and purchases, there would seem to be at least as
much reason for stopping it on the grant of leases),
the Council will seriously have to think in the
public interest of either acquiescing in legislation
to produce this result or making a Solicitors' Prac
tice Rule to this effect.
In paragraph thirty-eight of their report the
Board appear to criticise the Law Society for the
way in which the Society obtained an estimate in
1965 of the shortage of solicitors. The Board say :
"We think it likely that this estimate was based on
a traditional conception of a solicitor's practice.
Therefore, we do not consider it should play any
part in our consideration of the level of statutorily
determined charges." The Board also state : "Nor
do we consider that such estimates should in the
future be made by the profession without assis
tance. They should clearly be made in concert
with independent advisers and with due regard
to the Ministry of Labour's estimate of manpower
resources." It is difficult to see the justification for
this criticism. The estimate that in 1965 there was
a shortage of 5,000 solicitors was based on a statis
tical report made at the time to the Law Society
by an independent consulting actuary and statis
tician. Furthermore, the object of the enquiry was
to find out on. the express assumption that the
professional business of solicitors remained at its
then level, how much leeway had to be made up
before the profession was fully manned; to work
on any other assumption could well have been
criticised as visionary and unrealistic.
The figures shown in Table 13 of the statistical
supplement to the PIB report have, so far as they
relate to the average amount per bill of solicitors
acting for lessors and lessees, produced a strange
result. Lessors' solicitors' charges are at present
double those of lessees' solicitors, but so far from
this proportion being reflected in Table 13,
it
appears that the average bill of a lessor's solicitor,
taking the country as a whole, was £20 in 1966,
whereas the average bill of a solicitor acting for a
lessee was £18, which no-where nearly reflects the
proper proportion of lessors' to lessees' solicitors'
charges. Indeed, taking the Central and South
east area by itself the figures given in Table 13
20