It has been a gnarly road, but you (yes, you!) have voted to accept the £100.00 practising fee reduction, which will slice £1 million from the Law Society budget. So what should be cut? What should be prioritised? How would you spend the Society budget? Let’s find out.

Were you there? Did you vote? The applause for inductee Joe Beltrami was warm and welcome, but a surprisingly small number of solicitors attended the special general meeting in September which passed the vexed motion to reduce the cost of the practising certificate by £100.00. The decision settles -for the moment- the issue of membership fees raised initially by David Flint of MacRoberts, which was a touchstone for far wider concerns regarding the Society’s finances, its spending priorities and with alternate business structures looming, the purpose of the Society itself.

The low attendance at the SGM may be symptomatic of a sense of disconnect amongst solicitors, or at least a lack of engagement, and whether or not solicitors agree with all that the Society undertakes, like any democracy it needs the participation of its members if it is going to be able to speak for them with any validity. The Firm undertook to canvass as many opinions as possible from among the membership to facilitate the communication process, and now that the £100.00 reduction has been agreed, we asked solicitors to tell us how the Law Society should adjust its spending to accommodate the change.

“Cutting the cost of the practicing certificate by £100 is not enough. It should only cost £100 to start with!” said Raymond Mclennan of Morisons.

“Training opportunities for solicitors should not be affected as the Law Society should concentrate on simply authorising proper training firms to train solicitors and take an affiliate fee. I don’t want to be trained by the Law Society, I want someone who knows what they’re doing to train me.

“The Law Society should be there to enforce the rules to make sure that Scots solicitors are suitably qualified and work with integrity and do spot checks to make sure firms comply. They should act when they don’t. Full stop. I don’t want them to write a magazine, give awards, provide training or be my friend. They are the police. They should outsource everything else and stop trying to be all things to all lawyers.”

David Ogilvy of Turcan Connell welcomed the fact that the Law Society is looking sensibly at its cost base, and says it is important that it is properly resourced.

“The role of the Society has changed over the last few years and in advance of a full debate about its future it would seem prudent to adopt a cautious fiscal policy and to look critically at its expenditure,” he adds.

Alan Campbell, managing partner of Dundas and Wilson agrees that the role of the Law Society has changed, and argues that it should prioritise enhancing the reputation of the profession through promotion and regulation.

“Everything the Society does should be designed to contribute to this,” he says.

“Quality evolves and has to be understood from the clients’ perspective. The Society needs to understand how customer expectations are evolving and how we are performing relative to service providers in other markets. Current market conditions are an impetus for change. The Society should help our profession respond to change.

“It’s impossible to please everyone so the priority should be tackling the main issues as best as possible to deliver its medium to long term goals. It should resist attempts to derail decisions which are in the greater interest of the profession and which implement its corporate plan.”

Campbell defends the Society’s record on consulting with its members, but counsels against being swayed by small constituent groups.

“The Society should react to the pertinent issues for the legal profession in consultation with its members, and not allow itself to be unduly influenced by a vocal minority. I don’t think the Society could be accused of not listening. It has consulted very openly with members and, like many of those same members, has taken some very difficult decisions to address the needs of the legal profession in Scotland.

“The Society’s members are facing real cost issues and anything the Society can do to ease the cost burden should be welcomed by all. Cutting budgets is never an easy option, particularly where there will be an impact on jobs, but in this case it’s the right decision.”

HBJ Gateley Wareing told The Firm it agrees. “In short they need to cut their cloth to suit and this becomes more apparent in a climate like this,” it said in a statement to us.

“From HBJ Gateley Wareing’s perspective, the reduction in the annual fee is well intentioned, welcome and appropriate.’
The fee reduction has been welcomed across the country in practices large and small. Eric Baijal of Drever and Heddle in Wick says the fee reduction is overdue.

“In my mind the society desperately needs to reconnect with its membership. Staff are generally friendly and professional, but in my experience are often ignorant of the realities of practice,” he says.

“The society ought to be concentrating on what its members want. For example, the office bearers may not relish the idea of picking fights with the Scottish Government; however, in my experience the overwhelming majority of members do want far more robust representation and a Law Society willing to be unpopular with politicians at times. I hope that the publicity around the SGM will result in a root and branch review of what the society does and what its members want it to do!”

That disconnect is common across firms in every part of the country, and the Society will need to tackle this urgently if they are to retain the support of solicitors, some of whom even question the very purpose of the Society.

“Personally, I have never really understood exactly what the Scottish Law Society does. I have, of course, read The Journal (which is not a bad publication) but £500 a year is an expensive magazine subscription,” says Rob Aberdein of Aberdein Considine.
“As a young lawyer, the Society has never done a great deal so far to engage with me. I would speculate this view would be a common one amongst my contemporaries. The relationship between young lawyers and the Society never really gets off to a good start with a broad consensus that the DLP is primarily good for socialising and that the PCC is pretty pointless. After that Trainees are subjected to “Quarterly Reviews” by the Society: there must be a better way in which young lawyers’ training can be monitored and developed other than by the ticking of boxes?

“In the years following qualification you probably don’t hear again from the Society unless they are emailing you about a CPD course, or if you have done something a bit naughty.

“What do I want from the Society? Only to feel like they are looking after my interests and that they understand what those interests are. I would like to feel like “we are on the same team” – not on opposing ones. The practicing fee issue was undoubtedly a marker being put down by the profession. I think the Law Society must now take a long hard look in the mirror in order to ensure it doesn’t become redundant or marginalised and further detached from those whose interests it seeks to represent.”

David Flint, who proposed that the fee capping motion that triggered the debate says the The £100.00 reduction in the Practising Certificate Fee of £100 is “welcome, overdue and inadequate.”

“Despite comments to the contrary, ordinary members know that had there not been such a groundswell of opinion from ordinary members of the Society. In May this year, nothing would have happened. Indeed, despite a third of the votes being cast at the AGM for a significantly larger reduction, the Executive, Council and a number of large “block votes” ensured that the views of a small number of large member firms prevailed,” he says.

“The £100 reduction is a start, but no more than that. It is less than the additional cost for the SLCC being borne by members and having just received my demand from the Law Society for 2009/10 at some £1325, there is clearly much that can and should be done by the Society to reduce costs to ordinary members.

“It is regrettable that in all the debate for alternative business structures, the one thing that appears immoveable is the monopoly right of the Society to control who can be a solicitor and to charge whatever it feels it can for that privilege. The Society needs to get a grip on its expenditure as it never has before and confine itself to those matters where it is required by statute to be involved – probably only regulatory matters – and allow those who do not wish to see their professional body spend members’ monies on issues which have little to do with the real issues facing lawyers, to opt out of the profligate expenditure which these frolics of fancy entail.

“If the Society really believed that it was performing a valuable function, it wouldn’t make membership compulsory, since we would all wish to join from choice and not compunction. Perhaps its substantial resources might be better devoted to seeking the end of the Guarantee Fund, which puts Scottish solicitors at a substantial disadvantage to other professionals – including English solicitors, and in moving away from a compulsory Law Society arranged Master Policy to one where market forces had a role; perhaps a system of 200+ committees in a Society of 10,000 members is overkill?

“On the other hand, perhaps the answer is to engage in a fundamental review of the Law Society’s role and to introduce some degree to competition and real accountability, perhaps by postal ballot rather than AGMs, SGMs and proxies.

“The Society is presently embarked upon a “consultation” on its future structure; regrettably this looks like more of the same, stale, unaccountable policies with greater power and cost within the Society’s Executive. It is unfortunate that it will be the profession and the ordinary employees of the Society who will have to bear the costs, financial and otherwise, for this collective ego trip.”

The strength of feeling in relation to the fee issue is inversely related to the extent of the membership who attended the SGM, but it is undeniable that there is a powerful silent majority of the profession whose tolerance and forbearance may not stretch much further. A strong and effective Law Society, responsive to its members needs is to the benefit of all. The Society itself may believe it is exactly that. But there is a gap to be bridged between the perception and the reality.