As Law Society President, Fiona Woolf has set out a tough stall on issues such as the silk system. Here, she outlines her goal of persuading the profession to trust a reformed Chancery Lane. Jonathan Ames reports



Fiona Woolf may not be the first woman president of the Law Society – she was pipped to that distinction four years ago – but she is the first Chancery Lane leader of the ‘brave new age’.



As overly dramatic as that sounds, for those who live and breathe Law Society politics it is probably something of an understatement. For most of the Society’s 181-year history, presidents have had a clearly defined role – figurehead, leader and spokesman for the entire Law Society in all its guises as regulator, policeman, educator and trade union body. Until 1988, the lawyer concerned was rewarded with a knighthood for his troubles.



But today the gong is gone, and in a post-Clementi, and post-Legal Services Bill world, Ms Woolf is the leader of the representation (or trade union) side only of the Law Society. And she is unashamedly excited by that sudden evolutionary jump. ‘It is very liberating – I don’t have to worry about regulation and complaints-handling because they have been ring-fenced. The president doesn’t control that side. My only interest is in promoting and protecting the interests of solicitors and supporting them in the services that we can provide – so my mantra is: protect, promote and support.’



Ms Woolf’s policy statements so far indicate that she will not shy away from controversy as she speaks out on behalf of solicitors. Last week, she advocated the end of the silk system, proposing that the rank of QC should be scrapped in favour of a scheme of practice area-specific panel accreditation (see (2006) Gazette, 27 July, 6). 'It should be done by field of practice or sector in which lawyers operate, rather than having a system that says these people are generally fantastic lawyers and deserve to be QCs. Especially when many lawyers might have an amazingly obscure speciality.'



And in the hotbed that is home information packs (HIPs) – not a natural area for a City solicitor – Ms Woolf proclaims: ‘I’d be delighted if public opinion and the Law Society opposition to them were now combined to make HIPs go away.’



But it is the transforming role and structure of the Law Society that will occupy much of Ms Woolf’s first few months in post. Indeed, the Society was one step ahead of Sir David Clementi and the Department for Constitutional Affairs. As a result of its programme of corporate governance reviews, started in 2001, the Society’s council took the plunge at the beginning of last year and voted to split its representation and regulation functions, which formally began on 1 January 2006.



That separation could become obvious to practitioners in the most meaningful of ways relatively soon when they see evidence in their wallets. According to Ms Woolf, the representation activities could form a voluntary payment line on a council tax-style bill, detailing how solicitors’ practising certificate fees are to be spent. Crucially, they are likely to be given an opportunity to decline to stump up for that element of the fee.



Explains the new president: ‘In the future we may see a voluntary membership fee for some services. That will be clearly defined as funding representation work and will be truly voluntary as it would be on an opt-in basis. It is our challenge to offer attractive and useful services that solicitors want to purchase. Such voluntary fees will be set by working out what representation needs can’t be financed through commercial profit and efficiency gains.’



Ms Woolf recognises that Law Society representation will have a tough job of selling itself to a sceptical profession and she emphasises the transparency element. ‘We can’t be the only institution in the world that doesn’t let people know where their money is going.’



Indeed a potential future model could see practising certificate fees broken down into categories: the costs of the Regulation Board and Consumer Complaints Board (until responsibility is handed to the proposed office for legal complaints); a non-voluntary levy for law reform work, which will be conducted by Chancery Lane and will be agreed with the proposed oversight regulator, the legal services board (LSB), under clause 43 of what will be the Legal Services Act; and the voluntary fee for representation work.



Ms Woolf acknowledges a notional conflict of interest between the Law Society Council – which, like the elected officers, is now purely representational in nature – and the Regulation Board, as long as the former remains charged with setting and collecting the practising certificate fee, as it is under current legislation. However, she points out that if regulation perceives that the council is not treating it fairly, it could appeal to the LSB, which could intervene to settle the dispute.



The Regulation Board, it is worth noting, has a rather different view of how the Act should operate. The board is lobbying for the legislation to give it the power to raise the funds it needs, over which the representation side would have no veto. The latter would be able to complain to the LSB if it considered the amount excessive, however.



Convincing the solicitors’ profession to become engaged in the Law Society’s on-going transformation programme is a major theme of Ms Woolf’s presidential year. Key to that process is clearly defining the lines and relationship between representation and Law Society regulation, especially as the latter has begun to flex its muscles.



Ms Woolf and her team of elected officers have already created a ‘regulatory affairs group’, which is designed to provide a forum for the representation side to collate its views on regulatory matters and then to lobby the Regulation Board.



Ms Woolf explains: ‘The group allows me to go out and look for regulatory issues that are a burden to the profession, that are anachronistic, rules with which they find it difficult to comply or that impose costs. And I can say to the Regulation Board, do we still need this rule? Or is the guidance confusing? Regulation should be proportionate and risk based – and some regulation may be unnecessary.’



Indeed, Ms Woolf is already targeting one specific, practical issue that affects practitioners on a daily basis – unclaimed client account monies. ‘At the moment solicitors have to sit on unclaimed funds for six years before you can apply for charitable purposes, and the charity has to give you an indemnity against someone claiming the money at a later date. There is a more modern system in the financial services sector whereby you can buy insurance to protect against that type of claim. And it would be great if all this money could be used to fund pro bono work or charitable purposes – as City firms have suggested.’



The president is also keen to explore the possibility of the representation side of the Law Society launching its own ethics telephone helpline. Such a development could easily cause friction with regulation, which currently operates a popular confidential ethics advice service.



Regardless of potential disputes, the new president is adamant that maintaining a unified Law Society – albeit one split by a large Chinese wall – is better for solicitors than a model of total separation, as operates for doctors with the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association. ‘Not having a complete split means that we on the representation side will have more contact with the regulation and consumer complaints boards, and that means we will be able to resolve issues more quickly and efficiently than if we were only able to interact with them as a result of formal consultation. But I’m not saying that we can influence regulation more heavily.



‘The whole idea is that regulation should be profession-led. My worry about total separation is that regulation would become an independent body, which would be profession-led but with a lot of lay involvement, which would then run the danger of becoming very assertive because new regulators are always looking for something to do.’



A City practitioner of many years’ standing, Ms Woolf is acutely aware of the Law Society’s difficulties in selling its representation functions to her colleagues in the Square Mile. In an attempt to bring the City and the major regional commercial law firms on board, she is soon to embark on a lobbying campaign in which she intends to meet senior lawyers at all of the top-100 practices.



‘The message is: don’t believe the myth that the Law Society can’t serve the entire profession because it is too diverse. We share a lot of the same values and we care passionately about the brand of solicitor. There are a lot of issues on which the voice needs to be very strong and very collective.



‘And there are areas in which the Law Society can make points that the City can’t make for itself. For example, the “fat cat” allegations that are hurled at City solicitors along with suggestions that the City doesn’t do pro bono work – refuting that comes better from the national society.’



But what of beleaguered high street practitioners? Ms Woolf is convinced that her City background is not a handicap: ‘I’ve taken a special interest in Carter (the review of legal aid procurement) from the point of view of my background, which is putting in place market models in fields – electricity and gas – where it was thought to be completely impossible.



‘And I am quite unconvinced by a big is beautiful model for the funding of criminal legal aid. I am particularly unconvinced that from an economic standpoint there is a huge number of economies and efficiencies that can be captured that are going to overcome the problems of very low fixed fees.’



Ultimately, whether she is engaging a company-commercial solicitor or high street legal aid practitioner, Ms Woolf has one over-riding theme: ‘I see my role as being one fundamentally of communication – with the profession and for the profession.’ Whether or not the solicitors are listening should become quickly apparent.




Fiona Woolf is a definitive esoteric global lawyer. Now a consultant at City law firm CMS Cameron McKenna, she has focused for the past 17 years on the highly specialised field of energy law. During that time, she has advised more than 25 governments on reform, strategy and privatisations, building a vast bank of experience that resulted in a CBE for her contribution to the UK knowledge economy and invisible earnings. Ms Woolf, 57, qualified in 1973 and became a partner at the then McKenna & Co in 1981. She is also a veteran of the Law Society Council, being its longest-standing member, having joined in 1987.