Your editorial (30 October 2008) on the result of the recent postal ballot reads like an extension of the Law Society’s publicity machine. It is disappointing that you do not seem to have applied independent thought to the issue. Even worse, you have ignored the fact that a two-thirds majority of solicitors voted against the Law Society’s proposals.

The Gazette has been strangely silent about the extraordinary way in which the ballot was conducted. The worst feature was the inclusion in the ballot papers of the Law Society’s glossy brochure in breach of the bylaws which restrict the length of statements on each side to 1,000 words each. Then, two days after the ballot papers were sent out, every solicitor received a letter from President Paul Marsh urging us to vote in favour of the resolution. Some might have questioned whether the ballot was being conducted in a fair and unbiased manner. Well, quite a few did. The Gazette did not.

The Gazette was also strangely silent about the Special General Meeting in which Vivien Stern and 19 others called for the postal ballot. There was not a word in the Gazette let alone any report on the appalling lack of adequate notice of the meeting. It should have been renamed a Secret General Meeting.

I thought the Gazette was supposed to be independent of Law Society editorial control. Apparently not.

Janis Purdy, Solicitor, Bristol.

  • Editor’s note:
    • The Gazette is not under the Law Society’s editorial control, as our editorial policy makes clear. However, simply because a majority of the membership votes one way on a policy issue does not mean that the Gazette must fall into line with that majority viewpoint. This is an example of ‘independent thought’.

It was and remains the Gazette’s opinion that this was a sensible proposal to broaden the Society’s appeal and secure new revenues on the cusp of unprecedented change for the legal profession, its representative bodies and its regulators. Readers are perfectly at liberty to disagree with a Gazette editorial and have their views aired – as indeed your views are aired here.

It is not true that we ‘ignored the fact that a two-thirds majority of solicitors voted against’. We reported the ballot result accurately on page 3 of last week’s issue.

Were we an ‘extension of the Law Society’s publicity machine’, we would have been campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote in advance of the poll. We did not express an opinion. Indeed, our news story of 16 October explaining the affiliate plan (page 1), quoted two solicitors in favour and three who were either explicitly against or who possessed serious reservations.

That 40/60 split turned out to be a precise reflection of the final result.

I invited the Law Society to respond to the constitutional issues you have raised. A spokesperson for the Society said: ‘The postal ballot was held entirely in accordance with the Society’s constitution – there was no breach of the notice provisions. The President, as chair of Council, was right to promote the Law Society Council's view (the council had supported the proposals by a two-thirds majority) and as a matter of detail he only wrote to heads of practice, not all solicitors. His role as prescribed by the bylaws was quite separate from that of the returning officer, the Chief Executive. It would be perverse if the President of the Law Society did not support Society policy and decisions. The booklet about the Society’s work that was circulated with the voting papers did not address the questions being considered in the postal ballot; legal advice was taken as to its inclusion and the suggestion that the conduct of the vote was unfair is baseless.’