Please take the time to read this - it is important if we are to remain a profession as we all understand it.
As you all know, the question of Alternative Business Structures (ABS) has been vexing the Law Society (and therefore the profession), the government, and various lobbying groups for quite some time now. It is simply not possible to open a copy of the Journal (assuming you do) without there being something said about it.
The arguements for and against are numerous, but on the "for" side, we have the government, consumer groups and large firms. They argue that allowing business ownership other than the traditional ones will allow more choice for the "consumer", allow different means of supplying certain legal services, allow "one-stop shops" - partnerships of different professionals such as accountants, surveyors etcas well as solicitors - and that it will allow big firms to get bigger through external investment and compete internationally, thus benefiting the economy.
The Law Society is in favour, probably because of the sheer numbers of votes and practising certificate subscriptions the big firms (and those which think they could become big) can muster, and are seeking to persuade the rest of the profession that ABS is a good idea. They are restructuring their organisation and priorities to comply with government pressure and ensure that the Law Society remains the regulator of the solicitor branch of the profession. This has involved several controversial concessions.
The arguments against relate to professional independence (how can a professional be independent if someone else is holding the purse strings and calling the shots), values (what happens to things like client confidentiality), economic realities (the Tesco syndrome: if big non-legal organisations can supply legal services, what is to stop them simply squeezing everyone else out the market, thus actually reducing client choice) and regulation (how on earth do you regulate a heterogenous organisation, possibly consisting of different professions, through one identifiable code of values).
Clearly this is mostly going to affect areas of practice where there is money involved, and any potential competitors can make a profit, so financial services, estates, private client and conveyancing (particularly when they start to recover from the recession) are under major threat. It is unlikely that much of the civil court work we see here will be affected directly in the short term, and highly unlikely that any speculators will see any opportunity to move into criminal law unless any of these areas can be commoditised and paid for in ways that we cannot foresee at the moment. If, however, your practice relies for income on any of the more attractive areas, this issue will affect you, either directly through your own work, or indirectly through the work your colleagues and partners do.
If you work in the public sector, it will, in the longer term, affect who you are dealing with and, possibly the way in which you deal with them due to the manner in which your colleagues are instructed to practice by larger organisations or business owners.
The effect of this debate has been to polarise (and perhaps irreperably split) the profession, and to effect a radical change in the approach of the Law Society, particularly since the days when we argued against the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission and had profession wide support for opposition to any form of government interference in the regulation of the profession. The Law Society is now adopting a much cosier and more co-operative approach towards the government and other external bodies than any of us would previously have found comfortable. As a result, the Law Society's priorities have changed so that their main focus is regulation rather than representation, although the Law Society will deny this.
Various other bodies also feel that the Law Society is not representing the profession in the way that the profession should be represented. I have been contacted by the Scottish Law Agents Society, who are opposing ABS, and they are trying to requisition a Special General Meeting of the Law Society to argue against ABS, Inevitably, they have their work cut out for them in mustering enough votes (either in person or in proxy) to out-gun the block votes that the big firms will muster, and are campaigning for proxies.
As Dean, I am not going to go into my views any more than I have probably pretty clearly implied in this e-mail. If you really want to know, contact me. But this is an issue of which you need to be aware and it is only right that you have as much information as possible about an issue that will, one way or another affect you and your colleagues to a greater or lesser extent in ways that we probably cannot even imagine.
I am therefore attaching a copy of the letter from the SLAS calling for support for an SGM and setting out their requisition, together with their proxy form which they are asking to be completed. Obviously we are past the time limit for proxies in support of an SGM requisition, but, assuming they have been successful in that, they will still be looking for proxies to vote at the meeting.
Over to you.
All the best
Ranald
Ranald Lindsay
Dean, Faculty of Procurators of Dumfriesshire
NOTE - the proxy form referred to above can be printed by clicking below
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