OSS motions defeated

Proposals to curtail the work of the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) were overwhelmingly defeated at the Law Society's annual general meeting last week.However, solicitors triggered a postal ballot of the profession on the three resolutions put by former president Robert Sayer, even though they were all lost by margins of at least two to one at the AGM.

The Society's council had opposed them.They are: limiting the OSS's work to 'serious professional misconduct' and ending its jurisdiction over inadequate professional service (IPS) complaints; not involving the OSS in complaints involving negligence which are covered by indemnity insurance; and setting the practising certificate fee at 495 for 2001-02, and reducing it the following year to not more than 400.Last month, the council decided that the motions disregard the Society's statutory responsibilities; implementing them risked a judicial review.The motions to hold postal ballots were put by council member Denis Cameron and received the 20 votes needed.

The ballot will cost 40-50,000.IPS complaints are estimated to cost about 4 million.

Moving the first motion, another council member, David Savage, said: 'I have a real sense of grievance that this money is spent on investigating trivia.'However, Lord Phillips of Sudbury said the motion was a 'huge elephant trap'.

The solicitor-peer predicted that the government would not allow the profession to ignore IPS complaints and that a harsher system would be introduced.