Targeting BAME lawyers, blasts from the past and peer review reality check: your letters to the editor

Stop targeting BAME lawyers

I read John Hyde’s article ‘New BME bias probe – SRA’ with a certain grim amusement. So the SRA has looked at this issue three times and is now going to do so for a fourth time, but they do not know what is going on? They do not know why they are commencing enforcement action against more BAME lawyers? The answer is stop doing it.

 

I am not advocating any quota system or ignoring rule breaches by BAME lawyers. If you break the rules you should be sanctioned whatever your ethnic origin. But unless the SRA is prepared to say that BAME lawyers are less honest or less scrupulous in following the rules, there must be some reason for what is happening.  I think it unlikely that even the gaffe-prone SRA would be prepared to advance that as a possible explanation. In any case, the fact that the SRA finds more rule-breaking among that group suggests the opposite conclusion – BAME lawyers are more likely to report wrongdoing than their white colleagues.

 

The SRA now has diversity information available. What it should be doing is auditing those places where white lawyers are in the majority, since it seems that we are better at hiding our regulatory skeletons in darker cupboards than BAME lawyers. It would seem that the SRA is quite good at identifying misconduct in BAME lawyers and therefore it needs to focus its efforts on that section of the profession that is managing to escape scrutiny.

 

Bluntly, it is utterly shameful that the SRA is unable to get to grips with this and it wholly undermines the credibility of our regulator. We do not need another report. What the SRA needs to do is stop unfairly targeting BAME lawyers for enforcement action.

 

J. Howard Shelley

K.J. Conroy & Co, Birmingham

 

Past is a blast

May I take this opportunity to thank you for publishing, in the last few editions of the Law Society Gazette, Michael Simmons’ memoirs of life as an articled clerk and a newly qualified solicitor in the late fifties and early sixties. They are the best thing that I have read in the Gazette in a long time! I hope that the publication of his memoirs will not prove to be a ‘one-off’ and that, subsequently, the Gazette will be able to find other individuals willing to commit to paper their memories of the early years of their legal careers.

 

Michael Davis

Moncoutant-sur-Sèvre, France

 

Reality check for peer reviews

In his Review of Criminal Legal Aid, Lord Bellamy indicated that he believes peer review is a useful tool to guarantee quality.

 

I disagree. It is no better than a file ‘beauty parade’. There is little or no evidence that criminal legal aid clients read or even appreciate the content of the extensive information peer review suggests is necessary to evidence top quality.

 

It would be extremely easy for a firm to create letters and information sheets to send to a client with all the detail peer review requires. Whether they are read or understood by a client does not seem to matter. It would be easy for a firm to create preparation notes and attendance notes showing extensive attention to detail, without any evidence that any of the work was actually done.

 

What would work? Observing solicitors at work in court. Requiring court legal advisers and district judges to report evidence of poor or inappropriate advocacy. Recording advocacy via Common Video Platform and allowing it to be reviewed. Visiting police custody suites with the duty solicitor. It would also assist the process if the names of peer reviewers were not secret so that inadequate performance by those who have put themselves forward to judge others can be reported to the Legal Aid Agency.

 

Solicitors should be trusted. Peer review and costs audits are evidence of a lack of trust. We know what information the individual client needs, wants and can absorb. That which peer review suggests is evidence of the best-quality advice is nonsense in a poorly remunerated, fixed-fee, costs audit environment. Our reality demands a completely different approach.

 

Arthur Michael Robinson

Director and solicitor, Emmersons Solicitors, Sunderland

 

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