CONFERENCE: solicitor QC tells delegates that system leaves no effective redress

The process by which the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) intervenes in law firms is unfair, a leading solicitor silk claimed last week.

Andrew Hopper QC, a defence lawyer who regularly appears before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, told delegates at the Solicitors Assistance Scheme annual conference that the system leaves solicitors with no effective redress.


He explained later that 'it is not uncommon for interventions which were based on a suspicion of dishonesty to be proved subsequently to have been unjustified'.


Currently, an appeal to the High Court is the only means of challenging the Law Society's powers to close down a firm on a suspicion of dishonesty or breach of the Solicitors Accounts Rules.


Mr Hopper said few solicitors are able to afford appeals, because legal aid is not available. 'There are very few of these cases being litigated, and those who are doing so tend to be people with private wealth who are pursuing the litigation as a point of principle. But their practice will have been destroyed long before they get their judgment.'


He added: 'In real terms the right to appeal is illusory because the odds are so stacked against a solicitor. There are not sufficient checks and balances in the system to enable a solicitor to challenge a decision that was wrongly reached.'


An OSS spokesman said: 'The lack of successful challenges to interventions reflects the care taken by the Law Society to intervene only when there are defensible grounds for doing so.


'There appear to us to be plenty of checks and balances for solicitors. A solicitor is given every opportunity to put his side of the story before an intervention is made.


'After the intervention, there is an appeal to the High Court - and there are plenty of solicitors without private funds who have exercised that right. It is not just the well-heeled solicitor who can afford to challenge an intervention in the court.'


Mr Hopper's view was backed by Andrew Lockley, head of public law at national firm Irwin Mitchell and a solicitor who has brought unsuccessful challenges to the Law Society's intervention power on behalf of other practitioners.


Mr Lockley said: 'It is time to consider removing this unique way of putting professionals out of practice, and to substitute for it a procedure that is closer to the mainstream High Court process, including freezing orders, and search and seizure orders, which are used in other cases of urgency.'


He said solicitors would then be treated the same as other groups.