A fused legal profession would do much to enhance diversity, argues Yvonne Brown

'One day we may see the artificial division of the profession reduced, so that everyone will begin as a solicitor and, after gaining experience, will be able to elect to specialise in advocacy with a minimum of upheaval.' Glanville Williams QC, Rouse Ball Professor of English Law, University of Cambridge, Learning the Law, 10th ed.

Like many aspiring lawyers, when I started my journey in the law in 1979, I took Learning the Law to be my 'guide, philosopher and friend,' just as the Cambridge professor had intended.

The ink had not yet dried on the 1979 Royal Commission report into legal services chaired by Sir Henry Benson.

That report considered the issue of fusion of the two branches of the legal profession, but concluded that it was not the way forward at that time.

Perhaps the time is now ripe for the issue to be reconsidered.

At last month's Minority Lawyers Conference (see [2003] Gazette, 23 October, 4) I suggested that fusion of the two sides of the profession would go some way to continue breaking down barriers to the continued success of ethnic minority lawyers.

The legal profession should wish to be and to be seen as forward-looking and modern.

The maintenance of time-honoured quaint traditions needs close scrutiny to ensure that they do not merely become another form of restrictive practice, stifling equality of opportunity, innovation and progress and in the final analysis harming the legal profession.

In 1995, the Labour Party's document 'Access to Justice' stated: 'An incoming Labour government will formally refer the legal profession to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission...so that existing structures can be tested by reference to their ability to meet consumer needs.'

Many solicitors might argue that, since then, the testing process has fallen unduly on their side of the profession with, among others things, the removal of the conveyancing monopoly and now the opening of the probate market.

The bar is also changing.

In 1989, the Bar Council introduced direct professional access.

More recently, that was replaced by the BarDIRECT scheme.

We have also seen some welcome progress on the absolute restriction on the ability of solicitors to practise the art of advocacy in the higher courts, as they do every day of the working week in the lower courts and tribunals.

The passing of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 enabled a few solicitors to undertake the sometimes arduous, expensive and time-consuming process of securing higher rights of audience in the higher courts.

Many newly qualified higher rights solicitors complain bitterly at the cost of securing the qualification and the time involved.

The traditional and strongest defence of retaining a split profession is the need to maintain a pool of lawyers skilled in the art of advocacy.

It must be accepted that there will always be a need for specialist advocates, many of whom will command a premium for their services.

But we need to ask whether the division of the profession is the most efficient means of ensuring the availability of such advocates.

It is known that fragmented professions with internal boundaries - such as those that existed between jobbers and brokers - lead to the creation of informal networks based on college, school or family connections.

These networks have no known connection to performance of work or client satisfaction, but present a formidable barrier to entry for new groups.

The mission statement of the Black Solicitors Network (BSN) is 'to achieve equality of access, retention and promotion of black solicitors'.

Artificial barriers to success should be removed and the current consultation - 'Constitutional reform: the future of Queen's Counsel' - is to be welcomed.

The Office of Fair Trading's report in March 2001 on 'Competition in Professions' suggested that for the legal profession the way ahead was 'gradually opening the way for each branch of the profession to be authorised to do the work of the other'.

We need to ask if this is indeed the best way to liberalise and open the profession to ensure diversity and equality of opportunity for all.

Is this gradual fudging of the roles preferable to a properly thought out and timely fusion?

If the dual structure tends to inhibit innovation in the supply of services, unnecessarily drives up costs thus limiting access and choice, should the structure not be altered rather than permit change through osmosis.

In the City, the elimination of the distinctions between brokers and jobbers and fixed-price commission has not been mourned; nor has it led to a loss of income for those willing to adapt to change.

For now, the polemical forecast of Glanville Williams remains some way off, but perhaps the time has now arrived for another Royal Commission into legal services.

Yvonne Brown is a solicitor-advocate and chairwoman of the Black Solicitors Network