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GAZETTE
NOVEMBER 1991
Solicitors Bill Assessed
In this article, the Director General of the Law Society, Noel Ryan, gives a personal
assessment of how the Solicitors (Amendment) Bill, 1991 helps the profession in
relation to the many issues currently facing it.
By now each member of the pro-
fession will have had an opport-
unity of studying the Solicitors Bill
in some detail and many will have
made an assessment of its impact
on the profession. The purpose of
this article is to give a personal
view as to how I see the Bill in
terms of the problems facing the
profession at present and the
demands that are emerging, or are
likely to emerge, in the foreseeable
future.
Issues facing the
profession
Amongst the major issues facing
the profession at the present time
are:
• the Compensation Fund and
how the financial burden of it
can be lessened
• enhancing professionalism in
day-to-day practice, improving
the profession's image as client-
orientated and providing a
quality service
• improving the disciplinary
machinery of the Society so
that it can deal more effectively
with disciplinary matters
• achieving a balance between
ensuring reasonable access to
the profession, on the one hand,
and ensuring that standards are
not lessened and livelihoods
threatened through over-supply
of new entrants
• the question of whether we
should have joint professional
legal education and other
related issues
• competition from non-lawyers
in the provision of legal
services
• the structure of the profession
itself and what changes, if any,
might be on the way.
I propose to look at the Bill and see
what it has to offer on each of
these in turn.
Compensation Fund
The burning issue over the past 12
months has been the Compensa-
tion Fund and the open-ended
liability of the profession in respect
of claims arising from dishonesty
on the part of some practising
solicitors. The seriousness of this
was brought home to the Society
in late 1990, when a claim of
£9.2m was notified in one parti-
cular case. In the circumstances, it
is reassuring that the very con-
siderable pressure exerted by the
Society on the Government to have
the law relating to the Compen-
sation Fund amended has been
successful, in at least one
important respect. Section 28 of
the Bill amends the 1960 Act to
provide that claims on the Fund
may in future be made only by
persons who are
clients
of
solicitors. In this context, it also
provides that a solicitor cannot
himself be a client of his own
practice. This provision will reverse
the effect of the Supreme Court
decision in the
Trustee Savings
Bank
case in 1989 and should go
a very substantial way towards
easing the concerns of the pro-
fession, particularly in relation to
the possibility of claims arising
from undertakings given to third
parties (especially financial institu-
tions) which has been a feature of
recent high-profile claims.
Improving professionalism
Not every member of the Society
will automatically relate the new
powers which the Bill will give to
the Society to the concept of
improving the professionalism and,
thereby, the image of the Society.
In my view, there is a clear link.
The Bill provides the Society with
new powers which will help it deal
more effectively with those in the
profession who, sadly, do not
adhere to the high standards of
their colleagues, thereby damaging
the good name of the profession as
a whole. Some of these powers are
long overdue and badly needed and
they will help the Society both in
relation to the area of dishonesty
and the area of complaints about
inadequate professional standards
and overcharging. The new powers
(in sections 8 and 9) which will
allow the Society to impose
sanctions on solicitors for in-
adequate services and over-
charging are important. The
Society lacks any real teeth in
these areas at present.
These powers should also help
towards improving the image of the
At the Law Society's Press Conference on the Solicitors (Amendment) Bill which took
place on Friday, 25th October, 1991 were L-R: R. Maurice R. Curran, Chairman of the
Solicitors Bill Committee; Donal G. Binchy, then President of the Law Society; and Adrian
P. Bourke, President-elect, Law Society.