The Gazette 1974

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- 4