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important to state that the overall responsibility for
advising the client, both as to the advisability of in-
corporation at all and the type of company to be
formed rests on the private practitioner. Th at is what
he is retained for and that is what he is paid for.
This Society assists by supplying standard printed forms
of memorandum and articles, clearance and communi-
cation with the Companies' Offices, supplying draft
precedents of principal objects clauses and attending
generally to the routine mechanical details. The service
has been extensively used by members and while we
receive a small quota of complaints about delay I
think this is inevitable in any large-scale operation and
we can generally remedy the situation fairly quickly.
We have to deal not only with the Companies' offices
but with printers, seal-engravers and other suppliers.
Last July, Mr. Plunkett and I and a delegate from the
profession met here in Dublin representatives of the
Revenue Commissioners following which the Estate
Duty Office agreed to assist a system whereby assess-
ments of Estate Duty (including cases in which the
assets include private 'limited companies) will be made
immediately on the facts appearing from the Inland
Revenue Affidavit subject to a number of safeguards
including the acceptance by Solicitors availing of the
concession of personal responsibility for complying with
requirements as to corrective affidavits, transfer of
stock tendered in payment of death duties and other
matters and an undertaking by the Society to en-
force by appropriate action observance of such under-
takings in case of default. Members were notified of
the concession and of the conditions attaching to it
by circular in August 1973. The successful operation
of the system and its continuance depends upon' co-
operation from members and the Council strongly re-
commend it to the profession.
Regulation of the Profession
It is right to point out that the regularity and dis-
ciplinary functions of the Society are necessary in the
interests both of the public and of the profession itself;
necessary because we enjoy an exclusive privilege by
statute in certain fields of practice, and every right
implies a corresponding obligation. A citizen who
wants to make or take a lease, sell or purchase pro-
perty or have a legal document drafted, or institute
proceedings in the Court, must in the first instance
retain a Solicitor. He may have his Will drawn, if
he wishes, by himself or by the local school master,
but this practice is usually followed by disaster. An
eminent English judge, Lord St. Leonards, drew up
his own Will. Litigation after his death occupied the
English Courts and Lawyers for a decade. I doubt if
the intention of that noble lord was simply to create
work for his brethren at the Bar! Furthermore, this
profession is entrusted annually with many millions of
pounds of Clients' money. This is necessary for the
conduct of the business affairs of the community because
many conveyances and other transactions conducted
between strangers, who have no knowledge of their
mutual financial standing and indeed integrity, depend
on undertakings exchanged between their respective
Solicitors. Solicitors earn their living largely by handling
other people's money. It is therefore in the public
interest, and indeed essential, that there should exist a
body such as the Law Society equipped with the
necessary statutory powers to ensure that the duties
arising from this privileged position will be faithfully
and honestly performed and that any person who
suffers through defalcation or dishonesty of a member
of our professions will be protected.
I say that the existence of these powers is for the
benefit of our profession for this reason. The Common
Law countries by which I mean Ireland, England,
India, Australia, the U.S.A. and Canada are the
countries in which the legal profession enjoys the
greatest degree of freedom from State control. In these
countries, the profession is largely selfgoverning in that
it retains control over admission, education, the right
to practice and the disciplinary power either directly
as in England, or through the Disciplinary Committee
and the. High Court as here. In many European coun-
tries, to go no further, the legal profession is largely
under state control, through a Department of Justice
or some other arm of Government. If our Society were
to fail in the exercise of the regulatory and disciplinary
power, while seeking to retain its exclusive professional
privileges, which I firmly believe are for the protection
of the public, there would inevitably be a public de-
mand for a substitute followed by State intervention.
Professional Independence and the Public
For the preservation of the liberty of the citizen
and the rule of Law it is essential that the legal pro-
fession should, above all, preserve its independence.
From this it follows that the profession should have
the right to regulate its own affairs, have adequate
economic resources to enable it to act fearlessly, and
that it should not have to perform its duties in pre-
serving the rights of its clients under conditions cal-
culated to make it subservient to external pressure. If
the independence of the profession, in either of its
branches, were ever significantly curtailed, the freedom
of every citizen would be curtailed with it.
Professional Status
The terms "profession" and "professional" have
acquired different meanings in different contexts. The
word profess can mean pretend in the sense of making
an insincere profession of friendship. It can mean teach
in the sense of lecturers and professors in Schools,
Universities, and learned Societies. In the Churches it
is used in the context of taking religious vows. In sport
professionalism is the counterpart of the amateur status
and was formerly used in a disparaging sense, as it
was thought that the Status of a person who carried
on an activity without reward was superior to that of
the man who made his living from his occupation. The
advocate in the time of Cicero was an amateur in this
sense, and the Barrister at the present day still, in
theory, preserves his amateur Status, having no legal
right or remedy to recover fees not paid with the brief
or instructions. He relies on the discretion and integrity,
of the Solicitor by whom he is instructed. In the sense
in which it is used today as applying to the legal and
other recognised professions it is defined in the Shorter
Oxford Dictionary as an occupation in which one
professes to be skilled in and to follow; a vocation in
which a professed knowledge of some department of
learning is used in its application to the affairs of others
or in the practise of an art founded upon it applied
particularly to the three learned professions of divinity.-
law, and medicine and later to the military profession.
In the wider sense, it is used as descriptive of any
calling or occupation by which a person habitually
earns his living. A profession came to be regarded as the
title of a body of persons engaged in such a calling.
It is a recognisable characteristic of a learned pro-
fession of which ours is one of the most ancient. Ad-
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