THE RUNNING costs of the new legal regulation system should not lead to increased costs to the legal profession and would inevitably be passed on to the client, the president of the Law Society said at the weekend.
Addressing the society’s annual conference, Donald Binchy said all the set-up costs of the new authority were to be borne by the profession. Its board was to be remunerated, which is not the case with the regulatory machinery at the moment, and it would not benefit from the voluntary input the society’s regulation system has.
The Bill setting it up required the authority to commission a number of reports on policy matters, he said. “It is difficult to see why the profession should have to be responsible for policy formation – any more than farmers are required to pay for reports procured by the Department of Agriculture.”
The chief executive of the Law Society of England and Wales told the conference that reform of legal services in England and Wales had led to a consumerisation of legal services that was not necessarily in the public interest.
Des Hudson said the Co-operative company, which included a bank, a supermarket chain and the largest undertakers’ firm in Britain, was setting up a law firm and may become the largest supplier of probate and estate-related legal services. “Have we got the balance between the ‘consumer interest’ and ‘citizens’ interest’ in the rule of law wrong?”
He referred to a recent law case where the Prudential insurance company was involved in a tax dispute. It had used PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for its tax advice, and the Revenue sought the release of the PwC papers, which did not have professional privilege against such disclosure. Prudential argued its accountants should have legal professional privilege, and the Law Society had appeared in the case to argue only lawyers should have such privilege.
While they won in the High Court, the case was now under appeal to the Supreme Court, where the Legal Services Board was intervening to argue legal professional privilege should be extended to accountants.