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priate that the private citizen wishing to assert his
rights with legal aid should be confined to a panel
of salaried lawyers paid by and responsible to the
state as their employer. It is therefore suggested
that legally aided civil litigants should be repre
sented by private practitioners of
their own
choice. The principal objection to a professionally
administered civil aid scheme as stated by Mr.
Desmond Greer in a recent article in this journal
is that lawyers tend to congregrate in the com
mercial centres of big cities and can seldom be
found in the poorer areas. This may be a valid
objection in cities like London, New York or
Tokyo, with populations in the 10m to 20m, but
it has little relevance in Dublin, Cork or any part
of Ireland. Even the least affluent of our citizens
have little difficulty in finding their way to solici
tors' offices. It is unlikely in the foreseeable future
that conditions in Dublin will become so difficult
that an injured person living in Ballyfermot or
Finglas would not know where to find solicitor
and counsel. There is need for guidance parti
cularly in the field of social welfare legislation
and the growing complex of regulations affecting
the citizen at every turn. The Law Society and the
Solicitors' Bar have taken the preliminary steps
towards setting up a Citizens' Advice Service to fill
this need. It will be operated by solicitors and it is
hoped, members of the Bar, with the assistance of
solicitors' apprentices and students at King's Inns.
A skeleton student service has been in operation
for some time.
Under a state controlled and paid legal aid
scheme, staffed by salaried solicitors the practi
tioner would enjoy the same independence, with
responsibility only to the client and to the pro
fession as now exists. In time, a large amount of
litigation would be diverted away from private
practitioners to the state-sponsored body. The
existence of a strong corps of private practitioners
is essential to a healthy judicial system. This in
turn depends upon the availability of professional
business in the Courts. The absorption of the large
proportion of litigated claims which would fall
under the state controlled legal aid scheme would
in the long run result in the extinction of a large
part of private practice, and such independent
advocacy and litigation as remained would be
come the preserve of a few lawyers acting for
wealthy companies and corporations. This was
recognised in the United Kingdom and Northern
Ireland when the present system of legal aid was
established.
The question of cost must loom large in con
nection with any state-financed scheme of this
kind. It does appear that the estimate of £200,000
to £250,000 per annum given by the Minister for
Justice as the cost of a civil legal aid scheme in
the Republic is very high on the basis of the
available
information
from Northern
Ireland.
Under a professionally controlled scheme a large
part of the administrative work is done on a
voluntary basis by the profession itself. Local
committees of solicitors assess the means of the
applicants, with the assistance of Social Welfare
officers, and decide on the prima facie merits of
each case before certifying it for assistance. Under
a state controlled scheme the work would be done
by highly paid officials either lawyers or adminis
trative civil servants. A large part of the state
expenditure on civil legal aid in Great Britain and
Northern Ireland is in connection with divorce and
matrimonial litigation. There is a high ratio of
success in negligence claims in which costs are
recovered for the benefit of the fund. The latest
reports of the Northern Ireland scheme have not
yet been published. When they are available they
should be a guide line to the cost of a similar
scheme in the Republic.
Eric A. Plunkett,
Secretary of the Incorporated
Law Society of Ireland.
(Published in Leargas, the journal of the Irish
Institute of Public Administration).
SOCIETY OF YOUNG SOLICITORS
At the Autumn Seminar held by the Society
of Young Soliciors in Galways on 9th
November 1969 Professor Kaim Caudle
delivered a lecture entitled :—
LAWYERS —STANDARDS AND
PRODUCTIVITY
The first part of the lecture dealt with the
economic environment of Society. It was stressed
that there had been in Ireland an increase in real
income of 50% in the course of ten years. If the
present rate of increase were to continue, it would
tend to double our standards approximately every
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