The Gazette 1964/67

England has chartered a plane to take all the European delegates to Mexico, and I hope to attend this con– ference with Mr. John Carrigan. I will make a further report when I speak to you next December. The distance to Mexico city from this country has proved too great an obstacle for several other members of our Society who have attended previous conferences. It is hoped that the 1966 conference will be held somewhere in Europe where the problem of distance will not be so great for our members. TRAINING OF APPRENTICES Your Council is extremely concerned at the increasing amount of knowledge which solicitors' apprentices must absorb if they are to succeed in qualifying as solicitors. The course is both long and difficult and the percentage of apprentices who pass any of the law examinations at the first attempt is by no means high. The Court of Examiners have been asked to consider the whole position and to report to your Council. I cannot help wondering whether the standard set for the leaving certificate is sufficiently high in these very competitive days. I am aware that a very high percentage of students are successful each year in this examination. I wonder, however, whether the percentage of passes in the open public matriculation examination is equally high. I doubt this extremely. I am aware that some employers are not impressed by a candidate for a position who simply obtained a leaving certificate, but are much more inclined to favour one who has obtained a pass in the open public matriculation examination. The results in this examination do not, of course, get anything like the same publicity as the results of the leaving certificate. The marks are not published, nor is it easy to get particulars of the numbers of candidates who have failed. Your Council will do everything possible to ensure that solicitor's apprentices will be taught comprehensively and adequately, but it is well to realise that our apprentices are usually in an age group of 17J to 19 years when they enter into indentures, and it is going to be difficult both for them and for us if at that stage their standard of education is insufficient to enable them to undertake the very heavy programme of work which faces them before they finally qualify as solicitors. There is no doubt that now-a-days when a solicitor passes his final examination he is, in my opinion, really well qualified to deal with any and all legal problems which may arise in these very difficult days. LAW CALENDAR AND DIRECTORY By this time you have all, I hope, obtained your copies of the new Handbook of the Incorporated Law Society and the Law Directory for 1964. Your

showed us that he had mastered the new Companies Act of 1963 and underlined some of the more important differences between this Act and the previous Acts of 1908 and 1959. Tape recordings were made of all three lectures and may be hired from the Society by any Bar Associations who require them. The lectures will in the near future be printed and published by our Society. I think that we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our three lecturers for their very able work. SOCIETY'S PUBLICATIONS I would like to remind you all that our Society's other publications Administration of Estates Act, 1959. The Statute of Limitations. Married Womens' Status Act, 1957. Civil Liability Act, 1961. The Stamp Duty Legislation, 1890-1962. are all available and can be obtained from the office here in the Four Courts. I must also pay a tribute to the Provincial Solicitors Association for publishing an excellent booklet under the title of " A Guide to Death Duties ". Your Society has obtained from counsel a draft of Standard Contract Form Clauses in Sales by Auction and Private Treaty and this draft is at present being studied by the Council. There are also available now supplies of the new form of stock transfers for the use of our members. COMPENSATION FUND It is satisfactory to know that everyone who proved a claim against our Compensation Fund has been paid in full. We have now in reserve a sub– stantial fund over and above the amount provided by the Solicitors Act and whilst at this stage there is no suggestion that the Solicitors Annual con– tributions may be further reduced, it is, I believe, extremely improbable that the contributions will need to be increased in the foreseeable future. INTERNATIONAL BAR ASSOCIATION In his address a year ago, to the meeting of our Society held at Bundoran, my predecessor, Mr. Frank Lanigan, told you that the next meeting of the International Bar Association would take place this year in Mexico city, and he said that it was open to any member of our Society to go to this conference, and pointed out how necessary it is to retain an active interest in the Association. In January of this year I spent two days in Madrid as a member of the committee which had the task of arranging the agenda for the conference of the associ– ation in Mexico City, which commences on the z6th July and closes on the 31 st July. The Law Society of