403 / 462
GAZETTE
DECEMBER 1991
New President Will Oppose Threats to
Solicitors' Incomes
Opening message from Adrian
P. Bourke, President, 1991-1992.
It is an honour to serve as President
of the Law Society and I am looking
f o rwa rd to an exciting and
challenging year ahead. In this
article I would like to set out what
I see as the priorities for my
presidency.
The list of the Council of the
Society and the members of
each committee are listed on pages
386 to 390 of this Gazette, and I
would encourage every member
of the Society to use the
Committee network to raise any
issue you consider important and
to feed through your ideas and
views.
The Law Society has an important
role to fulfil not only in representing
the interests of solicitors but also
in ensuring that the profession
itself maintains the highest
professional standards
and
responds e f f ec t i ve ly to an
increasingly consumer-orientated
public. It is vital, in this context,
that the Society is accountable -
and is seen to be so - for the
manner in which it deals with
legitimate complaints against
members of the profession. For that
reason, I welcome the new powers
in the Solicitors (Amendment) Bill,
1991 to deal with complaints and
the appointment of a Legal
Ombudsman.
I look forward to the challenge of
leading the solicitors profession at
a time of change for the profession
in Ireland. The Solicitors Bill 1991,
following in the wake of the report
by the Fair Trade Commission on
the legal profession, sets the
agenda for the profession for the
foreseeable future. While there is
much to be welcomed in the
Solicitors Bill, I am determined to
lead the profession in opposition to
some of the Bill's provisions which
threaten the profession and which
are not, in my view, in the public
interest.
Real and Serious Pressures on
Solicitors' Incomes
The Society has a dual role, being
both the regulator of the profession
and its representative body. I see it
as a task of my presidency to
achieve a balance between these
sometimes conflicting roles at a
time of increasing competition
within the profession resulting from
the substantial growth in numbers
over the past 10 years. There are
now real and serious pressures on
the incomes of solicitors and the
proposals contained in the
Solicitors Bill to allow non-legally
qualified bodies to do work of a
legal nature would further
exacerbate those pressures. The
Government should be aware of the
dangers inherent in a situation
where the force of competition
places the livelihoods of members
of the profession at risk and
threatens the high standards of
professionalism
t hat
have
traditionally been maintained by the
profession. The way forward, I
believe, is to achieve a balance
between, on the one hand, having
adequate competition to ensure
that the public get good value
for money but not, in so doing, to
create a situation where solicitors
are driven out of the profession and
put out of business or put in
situations which compromise their
integrity and high standards.
Fees Advertising "s step in the
wrong direction".
I am also concerned about the
general implications of the con-
tinuing high demand for access to
the profession and the numbers
currently qualifying annually. It is
questionable whether the pro-
ession can sustain an additional
300 or more new entrants
annually
without creating serious
risks
for the public.
I am not aware
of any other profession in Ireland,
or elsewhere, where there is an
open-ended policy of admissions.
Resources available in the pro-
ession for education and regulation
of such growing numbers are not
unlimited and are already coming
under serious strain. I believe that,
if matters continue as they are,
there is a serious risk that, at the
prevailing level of growth in the
economy, there will be unem-
loyment in the profession in the
near future. Is it realistic to be
qualifying so many new solicitors
annually when there is insufficient
work available for them? The
community is already adequately
catered for in terms of availability
of legal practitioners and it is
questionable if it is right to go on
qualifying more lawyers for a
stagnant or dwindling market place.
If there are too many solicitors
competing for work, expecially in a
period of recession, standards
could be compromised and
integrity threatened to the detri-
ment of the public. The introduction
of fee advertising in the Solicitors
Bill is, in this context, a step in the
wrong direction because it will
encourage cos t - cu t t i ng and,
inevitably, threaten standards. A
legal service is essentially about
quality - price cannot be allowed
to be the sole determining
factor.
" . . . / am determined
to lead the profession
in
opposition
to some of the [Solicitors]
Bill's
provisions
which threaten
the profession
and which are not. . . in
the public
interest."
385