The Gazette 1995

GAZETTE

_

_

APRIL 1995

V I

E W P 0 I N T

Radical Approach required in Law Society 'Root and Branch Review'

must operate so that it may predict these changes and shape the process. Having done that, the next essential step is to develop a realistic and coherent plan of action, identifying short, medium and long-term objectives together with the practical means of achieving them, and to build a consensus of support throughout the profession for that plan. Although much of the Law Society's activities are regulatory and prescribed by statute, all of the 'trade union' role is discretionary. There is nothing to prevent its transformation. The biggest problem with the Law Society is not the number of committees or the method of selection of the President. The biggest problem, remarkable for an organisation of its size and importance, is that it has no strategic plan which analyses where it wants the profession to be in ten, five or even two years from now and identifies the steps which must be taken to achieve these objectives. Every member of the profession has an interest in the outcome of this review and should be prepared to contribute to it as invited in the March Gazette. You should write to the review committee with your views. review' it does so in accordance with a blueprint. It knows where it is going and what it wants to achieve. The Law Society review process must produce such a blueprint and be conducted in a radical spirit. Such a spirit is expressed - springtime is for poets - in the concluding lines of Philip Larkin's The Trees:- Yet still the unresting castles thresh In full grown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. • 97 When, in springtime, nature undertakes its 'root and branch

members who deal with the Society's staff know them to be particularly hardworking and professional. So, if neither the Society's Council members nor its staff are the problem, what is? The Review Committee was instructed to focus primarily on the Society's structures. If the Committee confines itself to the signals emitted at the AGM then it will probably return later this year with a report recommending fewer and smaller committees, Council membership terms of perhaps three years instead of one, limits on the number of terms which may be served and an alternative to the traditional 'Buggin's turn' method of selecting the Society's President. A few recommendations on how to cut spending will probably be thrown in for good measure. While such a review would be important, it would represent a missed opportunity. Although such changes would be significant, analysed more deeply they would be cosmetic and superficial. The core of the problem would remain untouched. This is because to truly address the problem the review must extend beyond the Law Society to include an economic and strategic examination of the profession itself. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the solicitors' profession as it approaches the twenty first century? It would make no sense to consider whether or not the Law Society is meeting the needs of the profession without identifying precisely what the profession's needs are. The solicitors' profession is reeling under unprecedented levels of internal and external competition, growth in numbers, consumer demand, government regulation, loss of social esteem and declining profitability where profit exists at all. It is essential that the profession correctly identifies the nature and scale of the forces which are changing the environment in which it

Springtime. The spirits rise. The poets write. New life grows from the dead earth. Blossoms and buds appear before changing, almost overnight, into leaves. Nature is conducting a 'root and branch review'. So is the Law Society. The difference, of course, is that nature's process of renewal is undertaken annually. For the Law Society such a process is rare indeed. The Society's archives contain the results of two or three different stabs at such reviews undertaken over the last twenty five years. They appear, however, to have been less than full- blooded affairs. Indeed, measured in terms of resulting change, they seem to have been positively anaemic. It is to be hoped and expected that this review will be different. The immediate source of the review was a stormy Annual General Meeting of the Law Society last November. That meeting heard a dam burst of complaint, apparently growing for many years, that the Society is deeply out of touch with its membership and that its ever-increasing costs are of serious concern. It was clear from the outset that the call for a committee to review the Society and its activities commanded overwhelming majority support in the meeting, including widespread support among the Society's Council members who also felt frustration with the status quo and recognised the need for change. Those proposing a review were well- informed and constructive in their approach and repeatedly made clear that dissatisfaction with Council members' performance was not an issue. The great majority of Council members are re- elected year after year and tribute was paid to them for the conscientious and capable way in which they bear the Council's enormous workload. In addition, reference was made to the report delivered a few years ago by the independent consultants, Price Waterhouse, which found that the Law Society is, if anything, understaffed rather than overstaffed. The Council