The Gazette 1974

economic conditions. Such agreements and gross sum bills are authorised by the Solicitors' Remuneration General Orders. Solicitors and the E.E.C. A Standing Committee of the Council has been set up to help practitioners who find themselves confronted with legal problems involving the law of the Com- munity advising clients with business transactions with European connotations. Meetings have been held with representatives of the University Law faculties, the National Library and the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Justice. At present, the immediate prob- lems fall under two main heads : first , the establish- ment of an information service for members allied with a central depositary library in Dublin for all E.E.C. legal material, and second the effect on Irish practi- tioners of the proposed directives removing the restric- tions on freedom of movement and practice by Lawyers in the Member-States. The first of the problems which I have mentioned is ultimately financial. Very large sums of money will be required to equip a depository library with the vast amount of legal documents and text books coming from and concerning the E.E.C. A working party has been set up to explore and report back to the main committee. The financial difficulties are so formidable that without Government assistance they may well be insuperable. The Committee has been in constant liaison with the representatives of the De- partment who deal with negotiations in Brussels on the directives of freedom of movement. I do not propose to enlarge further on this subject at present as it could in itself form the whole subject of my address, beyond indicating that it engages the constant attention of the Council. Legal Education Here again I touch on a vast subject and I must refer you to the current and previous reports of the Council and the Gazette for detailed information. It also formed a major part of my address at the ordinary General Meeting last May in Killarney. I, therefore, do not propose to enlarge on it except to say that in July representatives of the Council were received by the ne\v Minister for Justice. They supplied him with a dossier of the Society's proposals from 1961 to the present date. He expressed agreement in principle with them and suggested that we should enter into discussions with the Universities and then resubmit the matter to him- I am informed that it took 12 years negotiation with the Department of Justice to achieve the passing of the Solicitors' Act 1954. If the present negotiations about education take the same time we may expect to have them in operation in 1981. I hope I am not being cynical and I do not intend to be. The Minister has expressed goodwill and you may rest assured that the Society for its part will leave nothing undone to bring about the reform of our educational system which everybody concerned agrees is in the public interest. Retirement of Mr. Plunkett A most important event in the history of the Society has taken place during my year of office. I refer to the retirement from the post of Secretary of Mr. Eric Plun- kett which post he had filled with such remarkable distinction since the year 1942. His retirement rathe* saddens us Solicitors and indeed all who had the pleasure and privilege of knowing him. Mr. Plunkett was at all times an inspiration and a shining example of all that is good and worth while in our profession- On behalf of the Law Society and all its members I 6

any profession were agreeable, on these conditions, that public representatives of the necessary authority and calibre should be included on the committee. The Minister at the time appeared to be sympathetic to- wards the Society's proposals. Unfortunately since then events have taken a different course. There is no Central Costs Committee; applications for increases in fees must still be made to five or six committees, acting independently; reviews of fees after authorisation by the appropriate committee in some cases must await concurrance of the Minister for Justice, and a further barrier has now been created in the requirement in prices legislation of the consent of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, generally after consulting the National Prices Advisory Com- mittee. The tribunal set up under the recent Prices (Amendment) Act is not the type of Central Costs Committee envisaged in the Society's representations to the Minister for Justice. It includes no representa- tion from the Judiciary or the professional experts such as Accountants who from their daily practice are familiar with Solicitors' earnings and the conditions under which they work. One of the main tasks of the incoming Council will be to approach the Minister for Justice with proposals for a speedy system of reviewing applications in relation to Solicitors' fee at regular intervals to keep pace with inflation and to review the whole field of fees in the light of the principles of cross subsidisation. There are some fields of practice which could not be accepted or continued unless sub- sidised by earning, from probate, conveyances and other In the "typescript" of my notes the word "new" appears in inverted commas. Originally all Solicitors fees had to be set out in a document resembling a surveyors bill of quantities, each item such as letters, attendances, and copying being priced in a prescribed scale. This is still the position in theory if not in prac- tice. A patient who would pay his Medical Practitioner or Dentist a fee of 100 Guineas on a sheet of pro- fessional stationery with the specification "Professional Services rendered" might request his Solicitor to furnish a bill of costs running to 30 or 40 pages. The cost of preparing such bills is exorbitant, apart from the delay involved and sometimes the impossibility of having such bills prepared. One argument for the commission scale fee on sales and purchases is that it is simple, acceptable to the public and avoids the delay and expense of de- tailed bills. A new and simplified Schedule 2 system was introduced in England in 1953 and in Northern Ire- land within the past two years. A bill of fees in a non- contentious matter is now one item being a discre- tionary fee calculated in accordance with seven specific factors described in the Order. The considerations are the skill, time necessarily involved in the transaction, the number of documents read and examined, the amount of any property involved, the responsibility of the Solicitor and all other relevant circumstances of the case. In England and Northern Ireland the client re- viewing such a bill is entitled to ask for a certificate of reasonableness from the Law Society. In my opinion, the time has arrived for the adoption of a similar system in the Republic for all non-contentious work not included in the commission fees. Pending the introduction of such a system my advice to members is that agreements on reasonable fees should be made with clients, and gross sum bills should be delivered bearing a proper relation to the current financial and non-contentious work. The "New" Schedule 2