The last year has been a tumultuous time for one of the world’s oldest professional bodies. many feel that the faculty of Advocates and Faculty Services Limited have stood still for too long, though recent changes have seen some move towards a more commercially aware structure. That said, some advocates, John Thomson to name but one, were not prepared to wait any longer, as he told The Firm’s Steven Raeburn.

Not a great deal changes at Parliament House. This seems to be a source of pride there, and source of bemusement to the countless tourists who may have trouble deciding whether it is the gowned and bewigged advocate, or the woad-faced Braveheart lookalike, that is the spectacle placed there by the tourist board for their amusement.
Dynamic, innovative, forward thinking, cutting edge and contemporary are all words that somehow do not spring to mind when one thinks of the advocacy profession, which is no reflection on the men and women themselves, but the ethos that is cultivated around them. Would it surprise you to know that the company Faculty Services Limited still relies solely on paper diaries? It was for this, and many other reasons that in late 2006 advocates John Campbell QC and John Carruthers broke away from Faculty Services to set up Oracle Chambers, to create a more commercially responsive organisation that could cater for the practical working needs of busy advocates.
Around 75 fellow advocates immediately indicated they would join the breakaway, proving that the two men had touched a long-ignored nerve. The mini rebellion prompted a rash of reforms by FSL designed to forestall a meltdown, and an uneasy truce has been reached whilst the profession waits to see if FSL will modernise as promised.
In the meantime, advocacy must go on, and not everyone in the profession is prepared to wait. The Firm caught up with John Thomson, an advocate of 17 years standing who resigned from Faculty Services Limited for similar reasons, and is now operating independently.
Like all breakaway members, he remains a member of the Faculty of Advocates itself, which is a separate body from the service company, which, prior to the rebellion, drew a subscription from all advocates to fund it; a financial investment that Thomson says, simply wasn’t worth it. Now, he says, he is frequently asked how he is coping, as though he had suffered a bereavement. Well folks, it looks like he is flourishing, and having taken a step into the twenty first century, he is revelling in the freedom and success that has come from releasing the manacles of 19th century Faculty work practices.
“It was a relief,” he says. “I just felt they were going along the wrong route and I didn’t have any effective choice. No one seemed to have a plan to develop either their business or the business of the Faculty. I was just no longer interested in buying what they had to offer,” he says.
Faculty Services Limited’s failure to modernise the facilities provided to advocates was a warning to him that the system had gone into a state of atrophy.
“When I started 17 years ago I was given a paper diary. Every year I have been given a paper diary by FSL. In the meantime solicitors had become used to desktop computers, electronic diaries, Blackberrys, Smartphones. Only now, are they testing electronic diaries. They are creeping in, but no more than that. They were just using obsolete methods. I was concerned that there was no real eye to the future or even a proper awareness of the current legal marketplace. ”
The proposals to break the solicitor’s monopoly on conveyancing in 1990 was the harbinger of cultural change that the larger solicitors firms responded to rapidly. As advertising restrictions eased, niche specialists emerged, office systems changed, and the gentlemen’s club ethos that drove many of the large partnerships morphed into slick commercial operations. Dusty, panelled eighteenth century town house offices were swapped for purpose-built, open plan suites. Staff were organised into dedicated teams, with IT support, training, online presence and marketing savvy. The solicitors’ profession has fundamentally changed in the last fifteen years. In that time, the Faculty of Advocates barely moved.
“The nettle should have been grasped in the early to mid 90s. That was when the legal services market was changing,” says Thomson.
“As well as having no plan to develop business, they just had no plan for the future. I was paying a percentage of my income, and the only reacting they were doing was collecting that percentage. I took the view that a business not growing was a business dying. If we are stagnating one day, we are insignificant the next, and that worried me.”
Faculty Services Limited is a surprisingly new creation, formed in the 1970s as a dedicated service company providing admin facilities and resources to the advocacy profession. Although membership is not an obligation, it was quickly established as an inevitable fact of advocacy life, and like all monopolies, was under no pressure to re-evaluate itself. In the ossified conservative culture of the courts, to look coldly at the service FSL offered and concluding it was not satisfactory, was a leap none had made until last year.
“It shouldn’t be seen as a big move, but it is. Actually, it is a relief,” says Thomson.
“I suspect FLS will feel the cold wind of change. As more and more mainstream advocates leave it, it will have to start providing a proper service. We need to embrace modern service standards. When I talk to other advocates, in the main they are frightened of stepping outside the umbrella of Faculty Services Limited, because they feel it is not the done thing. Some who have left Faculty Services have been viewed as mavericks. I view them as pioneers.”
A crucial aspect missing from the advocacy profession, Thomson argues, is the transparency that would allow the public -their ultimate clients- to assess what level of service an advocate can actually offer. As each is, in effect, a freelance worker in competition with 462 fellow advocates, the logic of this seems inescapable.
“The profession should always be open to scrutiny. Every other business is. Tesco is open to scrutiny. All the products are there; you don’t like them, you don’t buy them,” says Thomson.
“What is absolutely vital in any a market place is to say ‘Here I am, this is what I do, this is how I am going to do it, and this is what I propose to charge. Do you want to buy?’ None of these things are incompatible with the professional approach, and being able to explain your performance to the public at large.”
It is an approach that has served every other professional very well. It seems only advocacy stands alone. The Bonomy reforms began a process that took the random factor out of finding an advocate within the criminal arena. Now, with a sizeable faction from in the profession undertaking their own marketing and representation, it seems that the members themselves are taking the lead in directing the profession forward. Thomson argues that the ultimate beneficiary will be the clients themselves, who will be able to identify in advance who they believe will serve them best.
“You have 400 or so advocates all trying to do the same thing, in different ways. I think we should have common standards of service, common ways of delivering things. Of course the quality of advice will vary in that, but that is where the choice lies for the public. They recognise the good ones, the tradesman-like ones, and the not so good ones. What is missing for the client is that there is not a transparent market place. The public don’t quite know what they are getting.”
In a very real practical sense, Thomson’s ‘shopfront’ approach has already yielded a tangible change in his working life. “Work has greatly increased - I now have about twice the work I did. I now have more control over the work and more contact with the customer. No solicitor using me has objected to the approach because they know it is a good selling point for their clients, and I am happy to provide the product that they want.” he says.
“On the negative side, I am no longer able to use the Consultation Centre where solicitors are used to attending. This is because the Faculty have leased the premises to Faculty Services Limited. In turn FSL have decided that only subscribers can use the building. However, Roy Martin [Dean of the Faculty of Advocates] has gone to some lengths to ensure I have rooms available in Faculty buildings to consult.”
The atmosphere of Parliament Square is frankly not conducive to progressive thinking. It is unsurprising that the profession which is based there has not fully embraced the realities of modern commerce. Thomson speaks freely of ‘customers’, ‘markets’, ‘buying’ and ‘service’ none of which have entered the legal lexicon comfortably. The fact remains that an advocate offers a service to the public in a manner not far removed from the way a plumber or a dentist does. Thomson is arguing for leadership from within the profession that allows those practising it to function in a practical, modern working environment, in a way that promotes high standards and best practice. It is the culture of conservatism that is unnecessarily holding it back. With a fracture already evident, he urges his fellow advocates to embrace the realities of competing in a freelance environment.
“Don’t look back. Deal in the now, with an eye to the future,” he says.
“There are dozens and dozens of advocates who are extremely worried about the future, and they are looking for someone else to give them the lead. My message to them is, ‘Look to yourself first’. Really look about what you as an individual are doing, and coordinate with others to see where the common things are.”
In Thomson’s view, change has already begun, and it is inevitable that in ten years time, advocacy will have evolved.
“I think every advocate will have his own particular service standards, will openly declare which areas of practice he is interested in and it will be much easier to have access to him. In ten years time we may not be talking about solicitors and advocates. We may just be talking about lawyers.”