Towards the end of this year, I shall be marking the 50th anniversary of my admission to the roll of solicitors. Marking, I should stress, rather than celebrating: this was more than a year after I had left the law for journalism. I have never held a practising certificate and no longer pay the regulator to keep my name on the roll.
But I do have vivid memories of the firm where I was trained as an articled clerk. The senior partner must have been very ancient when I arrived – perhaps nearly as old as I am now – and was semi-retired.
Mr Robinson had apparently made over the firm to his son and former trainee, who was to be my principal. He was also Mr Robinson – except to the long-serving support staff, who still addressed him as Mr Richard.
Richard Robinson ran the firm’s conveyancing practice from a fine room on the ground floor of our 18th-century building. After a while, I discovered that much of the work was being done by a middle-aged man from a tiny office in the attic. He was a ‘managing clerk’, I was told, and yet he was signing letters in the name of the firm.
Like me, he was working under supervision – or so I was led to believe. Though I worked from a corner of my principal’s office, I never saw Robinson checking any of this man’s work. One day, though, I had a conveyancing query that the solicitor was unable to answer.
He’ll tell you what to do, my principal said, referring to the man in the attic. It then dawned on me that the managing clerk was supervising the solicitor rather than the other way round.
Though this was the early 1970s, the profession was still class-based. Looking for a gap-year job in 1968, I found one law firm offering a training contract at a salary of precisely nil. ‘No premium required,’ it added generously. Those with money and connections became solicitors. Those without studied at night school and built up an unchallengeable expertise in their chosen area of the law.
What would our managing clerks – nobody yet called them legal executives – have made of a judgment last September in a case brought by Charles Russell Speechlys against Julia Mazur and Jerome Stuart?
The law firm claimed that its former clients owed it nearly £55,000 for work done. It instructed a solicitors’ firm specialising in commercial debt recovery, which issued proceedings in the county court. The defendants appealed.
Mazur, who appeared in person at the High Court, is not a practising lawyer but Mr Justice Sheldon said her submissions on the law ‘were of a very high quality’. She had noticed that the debt recovery litigation – a ‘reserved activity’ – was being conducted against her and her co-defendant by Peter Middleton, a non-solicitor.
This was not allowed by the Legal Services Act 2007, she argued, even though Middleton was employed by a duly authorised regulated body and supervised by Robert Ashall, a solicitor and director.
The judge agreed. ‘Mr Middleton was not entitled to conduct litigation under the supervision of Mr Ashall,’ said Sheldon. Mere employment by a person or firm authorised to conduct litigation was not sufficient, even if the employee was working under supervision.
Gazette readers will be familiar with the consternation caused by this unexpected ruling, particularly among legal executives. Unusually, their representative body has been granted permission to challenge Sheldon’s decision. The appeal will be heard next week by the master of the rolls, the chancellor of the High Court and Lady Justice Andrews.
CILEX will be represented by Nicholas Bacon KC, Helen Evans KC and two juniors, all from 4 New Square chambers. They are instructed by Iain Miller, head of legal services regulation at Kingsley Napley. The five lawyers are acting pro bono.
It is clearly in the public interest for this issue to be resolved. Although Sheldon’s ruling favours solicitors over non-qualified staff, it has disrupted a cost-effective structure that has worked well for many decades.
Shortly after leaving the firm where I was trained, my wife and I bought a small flat on a long lease. I had enough sense not to do my own conveyancing but I was disappointed when my former employers gave the work to the other ex-trainee, who knew as little about the Rent Act as I did.
That became clear when we tried to sell the flat in 1978. I had to pay the freeholder to rectify an error in the lease and I sued my former employers for the money. The defendants sent the claim to counsel who spotted that I had instructed a friend – now a KC – to draft it. How could I do that, the defendants asked, when I didn’t hold a practising certificate?
Fortunately, we agreed to settle.
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