The Gazette 1977

GAZETTE

APRIL 1977

Do you think that perhaps you could overcome that by getting down to talking about demarcations between yourselves and barristers? Things like that which might make it easier and indeed work that perhaps a solicitor's clerk could appropriately do? Well, solicitor's clerks could not deal with court work, they could not go in and defend No but Conveyancing for example which is recommended for the Examiner of Restrictive Practices Well, yes in simple cases they can and under supervision they do at the moment, but they must be supervised. It is also significant that it is very unfortunate that you cannot say to yourself that the profession is guaranteed a future which it should have had if the Consultant's recommendations had been accepted, particularly in rural Ireland. I saw afigure in a newspaper today of £40 per hour for a solicitor in the High Court. £40 an hour is good money by anybody's standards. I am glad you raised that because that sounds very attractive and I wish it were true, but the £40 an hour takes into account all the research and background work. It is like saying a doctor is paid £1 a minute because he charges £60 for an hour's operation. But in fact he has consultancy work beforehand, he has to examine the patient, he has to look at X-rays, there is a lot of background work. It is the same with the legal profession. In no way do you go in at 11 o'clock and you come out at 12 o'clock with £40. That would be ludicrous and we do not want that. But looking at the difference between the money that you calculated to be getting for the High Court, Circuit Court and the District Court, is it because there is much more work involved in the High Court case? That includes the time that was spent preparing the barristers brief, taking statements from witnesses, going out to the scene of the accident, instructing the mapper, going along and interviewing Gárdai, interviewing doctors, surgeons, looking at X-rays, passing them on to doctors. There is an enormous amount of back-up work, and in criminal work it is just the same. So you just do not go in and get £40 an hour —no way. What would you say to Mrs. Smith in the Street who said she never saw a poor solicitor? Well that it would be a poor profession that was going round in dilapidated condition. It would not inspire much confidence to Mrs. Smith. I think we must try and keep up appearances and that is what we try to do. And does that mean that you have to have very big fees to do that? I think the fees are not very big if you see the Commission's own figures. They are talking about an average for solicitors of £6,500 a year in round figures. I do not think there is anything extraordinary about that. There are many, many electricians and more power to them and other skilled people who are earning much more.

Is that a little bit of playing with figures, though? I think it is a little bit of playing with figures by the Commission, because it certainly is not playing with figures by us, it is anything but. And, also, I think it is very unfair that it has not been highlighted that the increase that was received since January 1964 was in Autumn 1972. That is the only increase and it was 20%. The Rules Committee recommended 40% and the Government vetoed it and reduced it to 20%. So, since 1964 until now, in the last 13 years there has only been a 20% increase and the present increase was based on a 1974 recommendation so we're running much faster to stand still, working longer hours and there is a serious, a very serious aspect of this. We tried to highlight the problem of the solicitor in the rural area, we tried to get an increase for him in the Land Registry scale because these solicitors are not finding it in any way economic to bring in assistants to cut out delays — in fact a lot of them cannot afford to pay the going rate to an assistant solicitor, they are getting older, their health is suffering, the work has to be done, they provide in many cases a social service and now the increase which would help to cut out the delays which you highlight is not being given and this is going to be serious. The Government is going to regret this. Well the position that, I think, a lot of listeners would adopt is that solicitors in many, many cases do not provide a very good service and you know the number of complaints that come through this office and that I have been in touch with you about and other colleagues of yours as well, and are you saying that if the fees aren't increased substantially that kind of delay, that kind of problem, is going to continue. I think in rural Ireland it is going to get worse in certain areas because delays often arise because people do not have enough staff. The delays now in many of the Governmnet offices arise because of this. There is 66|% more applications in the Land Registry in the last 12 months than before and there is no increase in staff. How can the same staff deal with 6 6 | increase? And if a man is suffering from bad health and getting older he should be able to pay an assistant and bring him into the practice. If the fees are not economic he is not going to be able to do that, and it is going to mean practices will close and it is going to mean you are going to get more drift towards the city. At the moment most of the big work goes towards the cities and we wanted to try and give the country solicitors a better and fairer crack of the whip so that they could provide the service which is very essential for the country as a whole. Do you find that at the moment there are a lot of young solicitors qualifying and then not going back to where they came from? This is the problem and there is also the problem which most people do not think about, because it does not effect them, but the liberty of the citizen is at stake. If there is not a lawyer on tap in the local village or town, it is going to cause problems.

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