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The Chairman addressing the meeting said :

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

As you all know, the absence of the President

from our Meeting to-day is due to his indisposition.

For some weeks past he has, on doctor's orders,

been unable to carry out his presidential duties or

in fact attend to any business, but I am very glad

to be able to tell you that his enforced period of rest

has greatly improved his health, so much so that he

had hopes of being here to-day but his medical

advisers persuaded him that it would be better that

he should be fully recovered before resuming his

onerous duties.

I am quite sure that I am voicing

the feelings of everybody here present when

I

suggest that from this Meeting a message should

go to the President assuring him of our very genuine

good wishes for a speedy recovery.

As his deputy it is my privilege to act as your

Chairman to-day, and on his behalf I welcome you

to this our half-yearly Meeting. A well-attended

half-yearly Meeting is a matter which your Council

looks upon with satisfaction as evidence of the

interest taken by the Members in the work of the

Society.

It is with genuine regret that I have to record the

deaths of the following members who have died

since our last General Meeting in November :

Mr. Joseph Kett-O'Shea, Mr. W. Gordon Bradley

(a former President of the Society), Mr. George

Carr-Lett, Mr. Arthur G. Joyce, Mr. George F.

Montgomery, Mr. William S. Collis, Mr. Frederick

H. Hall, Mr. Henry G. Morris, Mr. William B.

Scott, Mr. James W. Lane, Mr. John Bristow, Mr.

Eugene F. Collins (a former Vice-President of the

Society), Mr. Charles J. Spain, Mr. John Wray, Mr.

Robert C. Bathurst, and to their relatives we tender

our sympathy.

In the past six months the Council and its Com–

mittees have continued to pursue with unabated

vigour their work on behalf of the profession.

A matter which has occupied a considerable

amount of their attention has been the question of

increasing the remuneration of the profession, and

it is hardly necessary for me to remind you that,

apart from particular scales of remuneration which

came into existence for the first time since then,

no increase in costs has been granted to solicitors

for almost thirty years. When any application for

a general increase has to be made it means that

representations have to be made to no less than six

different bodies, namely, the Committee appointed

under

the Solicitors Remuneration Act of 1881,

the Superior Court Rules Committee, the Land

Registry,

the Land Commission, Circuit Court

Rules Committee and the District Court Rules

Committee, and this fact alone makes it difficult

for the Council to obtain a uniform ruling on the

questions arising. As you know, increases have

been obtained from

the Superior Court Rules

Committee in the matter of Supreme Court and

High Court Costs and also from the Land Registry

and Land Commission and are now in force. The

Committee appointed under the Solicitors

Re–

muneration Act of 1881 have made their Ruling

which, in accordance with the regulations made

under the Act, have been sent for your Council's

observations and these have been duly furnished

to the Committee, and it is anticipated that the final

ruling of the Committee will be available very

shortly.

In regard to the Council's application for

increased remuneration in the Circuit Court the

matter has been the subject of a number of Meetings,

of a Special Committee set up by the Council to

deal exclusively with this subject, and having regard

to the fact that there are so many different scales

applicable and that it has been found in practice

that very often different rulings are given by different

County Registrars on the interpretation of the

present scales, the broadest possible representation

of the various Circuits was sought on this Com–

mittee, and the Council asked a number of Solicitors,

outside the Council, for their advice and assistance.

I would like to praise the really hard work which

they have done and are doing on this Committee.

The fruits of their labours, which include the

examination in detail of all existing scales of Costs

and the examination of statistics bearing on the

business of the Court, will shortly go back to the

Circuit Court Rules Committee for further dis–

cussion, and I can assure you that every reasonable

step is being taken to bring this matter to a satis–

factory conclusion at the earliest possible moment.

We have found, when making applications for

increases in remuneration in connection with litiga–

tion, that there is a well-founded desire on the part

of each Rule-making Committee to keep the cost

of such litigation as low as is practicably possible

with this desirable object we have no quarrel, but

we do feel that in the vast majority of cases the

remuneration of a solicitor is only a comparatively

small item in the total expense of any case, and it is

certainly a fact that in Circuit Court litigation

throughout the Provinces the cost of litigation is

very often greatly increased by the amount of

witnesses' expenses which are allowed. Due to

transport difficulties over the last number of years

and to the present-day tendency to employ expert

witnesses much more frequently than in the past

such expenses have tended to increase ;

this is no

doubt inevitable, but the fact that such expenses

appear as part of the account furnished by a solicitor

is no good reason why it should be suggested that

a solicitor's remuneration should be reduced or