This is my take on the ABS debate and future. I confess I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland Council ,but I am not part of some craven running-dog Smartite claque of profession-busters, nor like King Canute’s idiot brother trying to scoop the waves on to land to inundate the kingdom. I, like the rest of the Council, have attached some reason, common sense and equity to our deliberations on this, in spite of what the more (judg)mental of the brethren may have said recently.

I also claim some stature in the matter. not only have I been a high-street practitioner for about 30 years, I have for many years run a kind of ABS. As well as doing a range of legal work for clients , I have written, performed, painted, drawn, acted, developed property in all manner of ways on matters not at all core to a legal practice, and have integrated several businesses in my office. I don’t hear the NUJ or the NHBC wailing at my door about how I have stolen their business.

And on the telly you might have seen a terrific BBC tv series about what goes on behind the scenes at John Lewis department stores. This documentary literally takes you behind the counter, into the warehouse and the boardroom, and observes how a major high street business is dealing with the recession, and more generally how it operates day to day and year to year.

Two things struck me as I watched. One is that the whole company - which uniquely is a partnership amongst its staff and offers no shares or public placing- is an honourable institution, dedicated to customer loyalty and satisfaction, and to value for money and quality control. Huge resources are devoted to those principles. And the other is change. Not just because of the crunch, but to develop and meet the challenges of a fast-moving trade world, driven by competition and a dynamic society, John Lewis is (constantly) having to look at alterations in all the ways it does business.

Ok. Let’s come back to the solicitor profession. I unapologetically make a direct analogy. No business, trade or profession has the right, or maybe it’s the comfort, of standing still. Change is forced upon it by the movement of those around it. Computers came about – what self-respecting solicitor firm doesn’t have them now? Who is going to pretend that the nobility of the quill pen or the manual typewriter is worth fighting for? And even if we tried, the rest of the world would just pass on by. We used not to be able to advertise, due to a notion of ourselves as an elite profession eschewing the descent into ignoble competition in public. It was a profession-wide referendum that changed that status. Who would now even propose such a stance? Change, whilst maybe not wanted by all or by any, is necessary.

In our case, the change is literally forced on us. The Governments in England and in Scotland have decided, within their democratic mandate as representative of the population who are our clients, that ABS is to come. It is not the Law Society of Scotland begging or conniving to screw up its members’ livelihoods – the Council has fought and negotiated for years with governments of different hues to ameliorate the position, but that great legal sage Kenny Macaskill articulated it most clearly, if not best – “ No change is not an option”. End of. What a sensible and responsible Society and profession then does is to try to manoeuvre to get the best deal. And our Society – your Society for solicitor readers - has been doing that day in and day out for ever.

As for quality control and customer focus, I could not sit back and say that our high street profession uniformly is comprised of top-notch businesses with the efficiency, quality and customer-friendliness of John Lewis, or even the dread Tesco. The other day I had a call from a new potential client, phoning me in a degree of exasperation. He said he had been calling another local firm for 3 weeks and no-one had called him back – this was to arrange a power of attorney for an anxious old dear. And when he had called the previous day to complain, he had been told “ we don’t have time to phone everyone back the same day”. No wonder he looked elsewhere.

Many firms are hot as Hades in their efficiency. Some are not. How and why is it that their indolence and customer failure should be protected? Many of those practitioners worried about losing ground to accountants or Tesco say that the interests of clients would be compromised. Hey guys, they already are - with some. And if you watch the show about John Lewis, then (putting aside the business of perhaps looking good for the camera) the message I got was that there is strict procedure, accountability and good practice at every level. Why would their legal services be any different?

The train is coming down the track, and that is not the fault of anyone in the legal profession – except perhaps those few of our members who have given fuel to the baying consumer lobby that have nothing else on us. But as with so many other businesses, the answer is to offer quality. My wife and I last week tried a new restaurant we had not been to before, though it has been open a year or more. Now we don’t get too many nights out as busy working parents. But such was the standard of food, service and ambience, that establishment has been added to our small list of places we can depend on for a good meal, and we will use it as regularly as we can. That is the basis of their business and why they will prevail over the competition. Not because they are members of a society. And that is the kind of law firm I (perhaps failingly or haltingly) try to offer the public – though we don’t do a pre-theatre executry consultation.

The ABS debate is worth having. But there are dangers. One is that if the various players in the profession don’t find common cause at the end of the day, the government will divide and rule, and without a strong and united legal profession, everyone loses.

This is not the Alamo, it’s not Stalingrad. If there is an analogy, I think of it more like being a student waking up on exam day. There is a struggle ahead, one I’d prefer not to face, but if I have done my best, I have the same chance everyone else does to succeed.


Austin