Work on maintaining the involvement of solicitors in personal injury work exemplifies the new focu of the Law Society's representative function, says Fiona Woolf


‘What has the Law Society ever done for me?’ Happily, that is a question that I hear less and less, but presidents of the Law Society should always have uppermost in their minds that they must be able to answer it.



I have made it a central aim of my year to ensure that our leading firms and in-house lawyers are once again engaged in the work of the Law Society, and I am meeting a positive response. That bears out what we learned from the ‘Have Your Say’ survey earlier this year about the importance solicitors place on having an effective representative body.



Two years ago, the Law Society Council took the far-sighted step of separating representative and regulatory responsibilities. In doing so, it put in place the key piece of a platform from which to relaunch the representation side of the Society. This gives us the basis for an entirely new service culture, and a new approach to supporting solicitors and promoting their interests unfettered by any regulatory responsibility.



Following some immediate changes in the way in which the Law Society is organised and delivers support to members, there is a real sense of excitement as we all get to grips with what our new freedom means in terms of what we can do for our members and begin to put that into action.



I will be continuing my round of visits to meet as many solicitors as I can during my year (not just at large firms and in-house lawyers) to keep solicitors in touch with what is going on at the Law Society, and to have a chance to shape the agenda.



One thing that solicitors often suggest I could do is improve the public image of lawyers. That seems an enormous challenge since we all know how many gleeful jokes there are about the profession. But I do not believe that our clients’ view of us is as negative as we might fear and I am certain that there is great appreciation of the value that we can add. That ranges from the huge corporate clients to private individuals. And that point is readily accepted when I raise it with government ministers and parliamentarians. The second reading debate in the House of Lords on the Legal Services Bill demonstrated repeatedly that we have been successful in getting this message across. There is recognition of the fact that we are the most advanced legal profession in the world.



The Law Society has just conducted research into the views of people who have brought personal injury claims and four out of five of them say that they would not trust insurers to treat them fairly without legal representation. Clearly, those people understand how important good legal advice is in ensuring that their cases receive the correct consideration and that there is a just outcome.



This finding puts an interesting perspective on the government’s consideration of whether to increase the small-claims track limit from the current £1,000 to as much as £5,000. Clients understand well how that could disadvantage them, denying them, as it would, the ability to recover the cost of legal representation and placing them at the mercy of insurers. We can be sure that the insurers would take every necessary step to protect their own interests, but it is acknowledged that the use of lawyers does speed up the process. They are indispensable in complex cases, particularly where there is no easy means of determining the appropriate amount of the claim, as in personal injury litigation. Access to independent legal advice is key here and the Law Society is working hard to ensure that it continues. We have been lobbying for no increase or an increase of no more than the rate of inflation.



We recently published our own set of proposals for making the small-claims procedure fast and fair because we thought it was important to start the debate with ideas that came from practitioners rather than letting the government set the agenda. (We expect the government to launch a consultation in the new year.) Our suggested process – set out in the brochure Compensation: Fast and Fair – is designed to cover all claims up to the value of £10,000 and has the support of the Motor Accident Solicitors Society. It can be found on our website.



We are fighting the corner of the solicitor and the personal injury victim on compensation procedures just as we are fighting the corner of solicitors and their clients on the future of legal aid. But that high-profile activity should not hide the intense lobbying that continues to ensure that the Legal Services Bill puts into place a new, modern framework for regulation of legal services that is truly workable. Nor should it obscure the training that we have been offering on the new code of conduct that will come into effect in 2007. We will be doing much more work on that in the early part of next year to make sure that solicitors have all the support needed to prepare for the new regime.



Fiona Woolf is the Law Society President