We publish here an excerpt from remarks by Peter Ward introducing the fifth Dave Ellis Memorial Lecture recently
AT THE present time there is an important debate taking place in this country following the publication of the Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011. This Bill sets out to transform both the profile of the legal profession and the manner of its regulation.
Let us be clear: there is no doubt but that the legal profession has within its ranks a privileged and wealthy elite, part of which represents a self-perpetuating elite within a deeply unequal society. It is unanswerable that the legal profession includes those who have a vested interest in the retention of barriers to equality in Irish society.
But there is at the present time a real danger that the understandable desire to puncture the self-importance of this profession and the understandable hope of reducing the cost of legal services will distract from a full analysis of reforms which, if introduced, would be deeply damaging to the rights and interests of the people of this country.
There are two issues which are of central importance in ensuring that the State, State bodies, the wealthy and the powerful of this country are held in some way to account: through an independent legal profession to which the people of this country have the greatest possible access.
There is no equal access to justice in this country. If there were we would not be gathered here this evening. But what the work of 650 volunteer solicitors and barristers in Flac centres demonstrates is that very many lawyers see themselves as having a social responsibility to widen access to the law and that the profession is not solely populated by those who are interested in maximising their income with every piece of legal work they do.
Secondly what the work of Flac (Free Legal Advice Centres) and of all those individual lawyers and organisations who are members of PILA (Public Interest Law Alliance) shows is that a robust and independent legal profession is prepared to challenge those in positions of authority and power and to hold them to account before an independent judiciary.
The proposal in the Bill that a Legal Services Regulatory Authority will ultimately control the legal profession, through a body whose majority are appointed directly by the Government, is an affront to the citizens of this country, who are entitled to expect access to both a legal process and a legal profession that can be absolutely fearless and independent in pursuing their interests.
The Government and the Minister for Justice cannot and ought not to have the proposed roles in the control of the legal profession. There is no such similar control of the medical profession which does not have a function of holding the authorities of the State to account.
Independence and accessibility are surely all the more important given the economic turmoil of the last number of years, when we have seen the most powerful and wealthy financial institutions in the country bailed out by ordinary people who never shared in their riches, and when the individuals who brought the country to penury through an unsustainable property bubble go largely without being held to account.
In these circumstances it is all the more important that the organisations and the individuals that are represented in this room tonight have at their disposal the independent and fearless lawyers that they need to pursue the interests of the most disadvantaged, the poorest and the weakest
It is in the interests of those who do not wish to see the status quo changed to have a conservative and compliant legal profession. It is a frightening and anti-democratic proposition that the Minister for Justice would seek to exert the level of control over the profession which is proposed in this Bill.
The Bill also proposes to provide different business models for the delivery of legal services. It doesn’t matter what the business model is for those who can afford legal services – they will simply avail of them and pay for them.
Barristers at present operate a business model that is simply each one operating as a sole trader. Many barristers have done so with success and have lucrative practices. But this model and the Law Library system does provide accessibility whereby barristers are readily available to the smallest solicitors practice and thus to the widest range of clients of the legal profession.
It also means that barristers are accessible to Flac and other organisations, through PILA and otherwise, in a manner that is difficult to see replicated if all legal practitioners operate through firms or partnerships. At the very least we need to review very carefully the impact of the current and the proposed structures on that accessibility before imposing them on those who need to avail of the services.
It would be an absolute travesty of justice if the popular and understandable desire to impose greater accountability on a privileged profession were to act as a Trojan horse for the diminution of the rights of every person in this country. There is within the current Bill every possibility that new business models for the delivery of legal services will do just that: provide new business models while ignoring completely the needs of individuals to have their rights vindicated in the face of the State, the institutions of the State and those who have assumed positions of power, money and influence within the State.
The people of this country deserve more than caricature and condescension in this discussion. The most awkward, the most troublesome and the most committed of the legal profession are those the State most often wishes to see silenced. The greatest possible freedom needs to be afforded to the legal profession to ensure those who hold power are held to the greatest account.
Peter Ward is chairman of the legal rights organisation Flac