Restrictions on legal services unjustifiable, says Fingleton

The quickest and most effective way to deliver reform of the legal profession would be for the Law Society, the Bar Council and the King's Inns to seize the opportunity for change, the chairman of the Competition Authority, Mr John Fingleton, said yesterday.

Launching the authority's study on competition in legal services, Mr Fingleton said that if lawyers and their representatives adopted a head-in-the-sand approach and delayed change to the way the legal system operated and was structured, the process of reform would be more sweeping in the end.

However, he also urged that the Government should indicate its support for reform.

"A clear statement by the Government that it is committed to bringing forward legislation to ensure full and open competition in legal services in Ireland would further encourage this process of voluntary self-reform," he said.

He said that if the legal profession adopted the approach that everything was fine, then reform would ultimately be more sweeping in the end. He drew parallels with what had occurred in the taxi industry when the self-reform process failed.

In a hard-hitting five-page speech, Mr Fingleton strongly criticised what he termed as "unjustifiable" restrictions which governed legal services in Ireland through legislation, regulation and convention.

He said that access to legal education was determined by monopoly establishments controlled by lawyers. The ability of business and individual consumers to make informed choices was limited and the opportunity for lawyers to organise their practices so as to deliver services most efficiently was restricted. "Lawyers do compete with each other, but they do so in a highly constrained setting. As a result, the system in which they operate fails to offer the value and range of services that their customers and the Irish economy needs."

Mr Fingleton said that if the same restrictions applied to engineers, the Republic would have one engineering school, based in Dublin, which would only provide full-time courses. Individuals and businesses would not be able to hire engineers directly but would have to go via another specialist. At the same time senior engineers would only work in pairs with junior engineers and share the income on a 60/40 basis regardless of the work done.

"Effective access to justice requires that sound legal services can be provided at cost-orientated prices. Justice at inflated costs or exaggerated quality, while it may appear superior, may perversely deny effective access to justice," he said.

He said the figures produced by the authority which showed that 130 senior counsel were earning in excess of €225,000 revealed that it was more than the handful at the top who were in receipt of large sums.

Mr Fingleton said that overall the 41 recommendations proposed by the Competition Authority would, if implemented, improve access to legal education, enhance customer choice and bargaining power, make it easier for lawyers to deliver services more effectively and ensure that the sector was regulated in the interests of its customers.

Mr Fingleton said that the authority's proposal for a single independent regulatory body for the legal profession would replace a "complex, opaque and sometimes duplicative system".

He said that the present system of legal representation relied heavily on self-regulation by lawyers themselves - a situation which, he contended, involved a serious conflict of interest as each of the regulatory bodies was controlled by lawyers.

"To date this intrinsic conflict of interest has been resolved largely on the side of the lawyers, not their customers," he said.

Mr Fingleton said at least two third-level institutions had expressed interest in providing courses for barristers and solicitors if the educational monopoly enjoyed by the King's Inns and the Law Society were removed.

He said that recently the King's Inns had abolished its part-time course, which caused huge upset for students. "If the King's Inns decides not to continue to operate its part-time course, that is fine for them. However, they should not stop other people from being allowed to step in and provide them," he said.