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SCOTTISH LAW AGENTS SOCIETY
WELCOME
Alternative Business Structures (ABS)- To read the Briefing Paper 2 by SLAS to MSPs please click below
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ABS - SUMMARY OF ISSUES
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Readers who wish to read the full response to the Legal Services Bill as submitted by the Scottish Law Agents Society should click on the button below.
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ACCESS TO ALL LEGISLATION
For those very few members who remain unaware of how easy it is to access all modern legislation, an electronic link which, on a click of your mouse button, will lead you to an official webiste which provides you with all modern UK legislation, primary and secondary. This provides the profession not only with access to the legislation which they require for immediate purposes but also provides us an information to review and comment upon the contents of the growing legislative mountain. Some of it, as you are probably well aware, is less than perfect.
LEGISLATION
Welcome to the website of the Scottish Law Agents Society. You can view the content of this site by clicking on the appropriate topic title shown on the left side of this page. While much of the material on this site is freely available to the general public, we have restricted some of our material to the private area for members only. Membership of the SLAS will therefore give you access to the members area of this site, which contains a growing archive of publications and documents. All members are invited to comment upon the content of our website and also to submit for inclusion on the site material which may be of interest or use to other members of the Society.
Members of the Society are invited to express their opinions about current issues and to keep the membership up to date with matters of interest and importance by submitting material for publication on the correspondence page.
As well as providing a source of legal materials, this site is intended to provide members with an interactive means of rapid communication around the Society so that, for example, new developments or proposals can quickly be considered by as wide a range as possible of interested parties and all members are invited to participate in that objective.
All submissions should be sent by email to secretary@slas.co.uk
Please note our contact details as follows;
Scottish Law Agents Society,
166 Buchanan Street,
Glasgow, G1 2LW
Phone : 0141 332 3536
Fax : 0141 353 3819
LAW AGENTS SOCIETY - STATEMENT OF ISSUES - JULY 2006
The Scottish Law Agents Society is the oldest representative body for solicitors in Scotland and is the only national body which represents exclusively the interests of solicitors in Scotland as a whole and every practising solicitor who has not already done so is invited to consider joining this Society. The following are examples of issues in which the interest of individual solicitors and of the solicitors’ profession as a whole require a focused representation and in respect of which there is simply no body or institution other than the Scottish Law Agents’ Society which is capable of providing that representation for all solicitors in Scotland and for the profession as a whole.
Regulation of legal profession (complaints) - the Scottish Executive is now committed to the lay control of complaints against solicitors.
Regulation of the legal profession (de-regulation) - the opening up of the ownership of law firms to commercial enterprises (Tesco Law) appears now to be imminent in England and Wales and is under active consideration also in Scotland.
Lay tribunal jurisdiction - one possibility is that these tribunals shall determine cases of conduct and/or negligence against solicitors with power to award compensation payments of up to £20,000.
Single Survey and Purchaser Information Packs – the pilot project evaporated in a mere 74 voluntary returns out of 1,500 expected cases. Result? Implementation of a mandatory system.
Legal Aid fees – these remained unchanged for fourteen years from 1992, effectively reducing fees by about 50%
Legal Aid regulation – perception that the Legal Aid Board has carte blanche to make any regulations that would reduce legal aid expenditure, without reference to the interests of the legal profession.
Public Defender (PDSO) – to be extended to the whole of Scotland, effectively excluding the legal profession from a substantial portion of criminal representation.
SDLT/ARTL – transfer, without compensation or payment, of clerical burden, including document storage, from public services to solicitors’ offices.
VOA – the unannounced, mandatory but unpaid imposition upon solicitors of gathering, on payment of stamp duty, information for the purposes of inheritance tax and council sale valuations through the operation of the Valuation Office Agency.
Prescription – restriction of normal five year period to six months or a year for solicitors to recover accounts from the Scottish Legal Aid Board, resulting in the loss of untold thousands of pounds of legitimate fees.
Rules of court – solicitors who fail to lodge documents in time can be rendered liable in place of defenders, regardless of the value of the action.
Limitation of actions – has affected many individual solicitors with triennium liability and the profession as a whole with the burden of insurance – now to be reviewed at the Scottish Law Commission.
Public Guardian's Office - subtle and unadvertised changes in supporting legislation leaves solicitors having to pay ioncreased fees for unsuccessful applications.
These are matters in which the Law Society cannot reasonably be expected to represent the interests of the profession simply because, as a creature of parliament and subject to a constitution which commits it to the public interest, the Law Society is conditioned to support the public interest position as envisaged by parliament according to the direction of the political wind blowing from time to time, whether or not that position may be truly in the public interest and certainly whether or not that position may be either in the interests of the solicitors’ profession or in the public interest in maintaining a solicitors’ profession which is vigorous and independent of the executive. While the Law Society performs a vital function in the administration of legal services, that function does not and cannot include the representation of the solicitors’ profession. All solicitors are affected by some of these issues but few if any solicitors are affected by all of these issues and it follows that, as well as forming groups to represent particular areas of practice or particular geographical areas, it is in the interests of the solicitors’ profession as a whole to have a national representative body which brings together all practitioners affected by some or other of these issues. The Scottish Law Agents Society, more than twice as old as the Law Society, has a long standing constitution to provide that representation, has a well established system of committees with monthly council meetings and maintains regular contact with the Scottish Executive, Parliamentary Committees, members of the Scottish Parliament, The Law Society, Registers of Scotland, the Scottish Legal Aid Board, Stamp Duty Land Tax, Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Ombudsman and so on and so on.
The Society can provide the principal representation required to address these issues on behalf of the profession but membership is entirely voluntary and without its membership, the Society is nothing and as long as any individual solicitor elects not to support the Society with his or her membership, then the Society is the weaker as a result. Non member solicitors are therefore invited to consider joining the Society for an annual fee of £70 (£35 for trainees, part time or retired solicitors) which entitles members to the bi-monthly Gazette, the annual memorandum book (the Wee Red Book) access to the members area of the Society’s website and an opportunity to make their views known through the Society’s Gazette or website at www.scottishlawagents.org or by registration on the Society’s virtual electronic council. Whether you join us as an ordinary or part time member or as a member of our electronic council or, ultimately, as a full Council Member, you will be invited to let us have your news, views and aspirations, to join in our electronic interchange on the website and to participate in the benefits, we hope, of a strong and unified professional body
Michael Sheridan, Secretary.
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