Solicitors are enthusiastic about reform of the legal profession that will make it more transparent and thereby increase public confidence, writes Ken Murphy
On Tuesday night, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell addressed the student debating society, the Hist, in Trinity College on the motion "that regulation of the legal profession should be reformed".
He used the occasion to unveil a reform package which, when implemented, will transform the basis on which civil litigation costs are determined and assessed. He also announced a Government decision to establish, for the first time, a Legal Services ombudsman to oversee the handling by the Law Society and the Bar Council of the handling of complaints against solicitors and barristers. He described these reform measures as "radical, modernising and consumer-empowering".
Three broad strands of recommendations are contained in the report of the Legal Costs Working Group, established by the Minister in 2004 and chaired by former secretary general of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment Paul Haran.
Firstly, the group recommends the replacement of the existing taxation of costs system with a new system of assessment predicated on the formulation of recoverable cost guidelines - based on work actually and appropriately done - by a regulatory body. Secondly, the group recommends significant changes in the information a solicitor is required to provide to clients, and the manner in which it is to be provided, and finally the group recommends legislative and procedural changes to reduce delays in the courts process. It is the group's view that these proposals, if acted upon, will lead to a new costs assessment process that will be transparent, predictable and accessible.
The Law Society engaged fully with the Haran Working Group and made detailed written and oral presentations to it. The society has not had time as yet to consider fully the report's detailed recommendations and their implications. Accordingly, with the caution characteristic of lawyers everywhere, any views I express here are preliminary in nature only.
The society has long recognised that major change is politically inevitable in this area. Our main concern has been that, in a desire to be "radical" in its reform recommendations, the group might lose sight of the essential nature of civil litigation as a vital part of the administration of justice.
Access to the courts is a constitutional right of every citizen. The right to legal representation and the lawyer/client relationship exist in the common good to guarantee equality of arms and to ensure the maintenance of fairness between the strong and the weak. We are pleased to see, the report accepts that rigid scales of costs would, as the society had argued, have led to reduced access to justice and favoured those with deep pockets over those with shallow pockets or no pockets at all.
We were also pleased to note that the working group adopted many of the society's recommendations for structural and procedural reforms to make the courts more efficient. On the introduction of a Legal Services ombudsman with an oversight role in the handling of client complaints by the Law Society, for solicitors, and by the Bar Council, for barristers, and a separate role in monitoring access to the professions and reporting on the adequacy of numbers admitted annually, the Minister acknowledges that this ombudsman is largely based on the Law Society's existing office of Independent Adjudicator.
The society recently conducted a review of the regulation of solicitors through a task force, independently chaired by former secretary general of the Department of Justice and current member of the Independent Monitoring Commission on Northern Ireland, Joe Brosnan. When that task force reported in 2004, Mr McDowell agreed to the society's request that he introduce legislation to greatly increase non-lawyer representation on the society's regulatory committees and increase the power of those committees to provide redress to consumers.
Subject to sight of the detail of what would be involved, the society welcomes the Minister's decision to further enhance transparency and public confidence in the system of regulation of the legal profession through the introduction of a Legal Services ombudsman. During the Trinity debate I was pleased to hear the Minister's warm welcome for the positive attitude to change adopted by the Law Society. He made the same comment on the Bar Council, but I write here only on behalf of the Law Society and solicitors.
Despite its reputation for conservatism, the solicitors' profession and the Law Society have been adapting successfully and enthusiastically to change for a long time. Today's profession is very different from the image which many have of it. In five years' time or less, the majority of solicitors in this jurisdiction will be women. Already the majority are aged under 40. There has been a remarkable increase of more than 80 per cent in the past three years in the numbers entering the society's professional training courses - courses that are at least on a par with the best in the world.
The solicitors' profession has played a vital role in the development and success of the Celtic Tiger economy. New areas of specialised practice develop constantly. Our law firms deal on a daily basis in highly sophisticated transactions with the best international law firms. It is very much a profession of the laptop rather than the quill pen. "Radical, modernising and consumer-empowering" reforms of the legal profession which are truly in the public interest, are also in the interest of the solicitors' profession.
Ken Murphy is director general of the Law Society