Seeking a model body

The Law Society's main board is spearheading a restructuring programme that is designed to create a model regulator and a champion of solicitors.

Jonathan Ames surveys its members

Corporate governance at the Law Society has been through wholesale reform during the past year.

Many within the hierarchy at Chancery Lane, within the practising profession on the ground and within the corridors of Whitehall would argue that the restructuring was overdue.

Chief among the Society's stated aims of the reforms is a desire to become a 'model regulator' for the 21st century, combined with an ability both to represent and campaign on behalf of the entire solicitors' profession.

It is a hugely challenging order, but one which the Society's leadership is adamant must be met.

Tasked with turning that challenge into a reality is a main board - which met for the first time last month and is chaired by Society Vice-President Carolyn Kirby - into which feeds the work of five subsidiary boards, covering representation, law reform, standards, compliance and finance & resources.

Carolyn KirbyThe chairwoman of the main board, is the Law Society Vice-President and the council member for mid and west Wales.

Ms Kirby has a background of more than 20 years in private practice, much of that as a partner in a small high street firm in south Wales.

She also spent six years as a non-executive director of a health authority.

Whatever it may have been in the past, the Law Society is now a multi-dimensional, multi-million pound business organisation and needs a proper corporate structure to enable it to operate effectively.The democratically elected council is, and will continue to be, the body which sets the policy of the Society.

Authority is then delegated to the main board to oversee implementation, normally through the subsidiary boards.The main board is formed on corporate lines, with a mixture of executives (the chief executive and other senior management team staff members) and non-executives (office-holders, chairmen of subsidiary boards and other elected council members) working together.

The presence of chairmen of the subsidiary boards ensures consistency of approach between the boards.

A significant challenge for the main board as it develops will be striking the balance between the two functions of the Society, representation (of primary importance for the members of the profession) and regulation (of primary importance for our external stakeholders, not least the government).Society groups and specialist committees benefit from a wide range of contributions of skills, ideas, feedback and commitment from a significant cross-section of the profession.

The new transparent structure is designed to acknowledge and harness those contributions and direct them to the heart of the decision-making process, propelling energy forwards rather than stifling it in bureaucracy as in the past.

Kevin MartinThe chairman of the compliance board, is the council member for Coventry and Warwickshire.

Mr Martin is a partner at KJ Martin & Co in Balsall Common near Coventry.

He hopes his involvement at board level of the Law Society will 'help me to convince my constituents of the relevance and influence of the Law Society in the complicated professional and business world of which our profession is a crucial part.'

My election as chairman of compliance & supervision committee in 1999 was generally perceived as a poisoned chalice.

But I believe my role will be looked upon much more as an opportunity to contribute in a forward thinking and businesslike fashion to the achievement of the Law Society's ambition to be a model regulator.

Much progress has been made in the past two years and this was acknowledged in the recent report of the Legal Services Ombudsman.

But much remains to be done to satisfy all our stakeholders and the new structures at the Society should assist that process.

I welcome the continuing and extensive involvement of lay persons on the compliance board and the adjudication panels which it will supervise.

My chairmanship provides me with a seat on the main board and thus a greater involvement in the general business of the Law Society, which will be of benefit to its complaints-handling role.

I welcome the fact that policy decisions will now be dealt with by the new board rather than a committee of more than 30 people.

This must make it leaner, fitter and more capable of reacting to issues on a monthly, weekly or even a daily basis.

But the membership of the adjudication panels will be enlarged and dedicated to maintaining and improving the high volume of casework decision making which has been achieved in recent months.

I am optimistic that all of this will lead to a greater level of satisfaction by the public, the profession and by our stakeholders.

ED NALLYThe chairman of the standards board, is the council member for Central Lancashire and Northern Greater Manchester.

Mr Nally was articled at a commercial practice in Manchester before joining Fieldings Porter as a newly qualified solicitor in 1980.

He practises in the fields of commercial property and business law, mainly for local owner-managed companies and businesses.

He also acts as licensing solicitor for the Salford Roman Catholic Diocese.

Mr Nally describes the firm as a highly typical provincial practice which has several legal aid franchises.

At the firm, Mr Nally has been responsible for the achievement and implementation of Investors in People and the Lexcel standard.

The standards board is an excellent initiative to promote the best interests of our clients through a fair and modern interpretation of the roles and responsibilities of solicitors.

We will have lay involvement for the first time. We must be prepared to approach our standards with clients in mind, and not in an overly defensive way.

If that means for some that their standards would have to be raised, then so be it.

For most, it will just mean acknowledgement of the excellent work which goes on already.The standards board has the means to link the regulation of solicitors with their training in a far less disjointed way than perhaps they have been administered to date.

We could, for example, try to design legal education and training so that it links far more closely into the needs and demands of our clients.

City firms may expect City-oriented training.

All solicitors should be trained in the fields of client care as fundamental core elements of their training.

I'm attracted to the idea of linking the training of solicitors to the delivery of the core standards that will be within the new rule book.Our early efforts will be at completing the rules review, which is scheduled for July 2002, and also for us to embark upon a review of training in all its forms with that work being informed by the consultation instituted by the training committee which is already under way, with responses being invited in early October.'

Hilary SiddleThe chairwoman of the law reform board, is the council member for Cumbria and Lancaster.

She is a partner with Holden & Wilsons in Lancaster, a broadly based private client practice.

And she has been chairwoman of the Law Society's family law committee, vice- chairwoman of the courts and legal services committee and a member of the executive committee.

The law reform board's task is to promote the Law Society as the leading voice on law reform and to liaise with the government, national and international bodies on all law reform issues.

The board will work through the Society's specialist committees.

It will respond to government legislation and EU directives, and will look at areas where people are currently disadvantaged and where reform is long overdue.

The board will initiate reform and lead the public debate in the media.

It will advise the council on the development of policy.

Over a period of time, I hope it will become much more proactive.As solicitors, we recognise badly drafted legislation.

We see hardship and unfairness from arbitrary decisions and a lack of clarity.

When we see injustice and we know the law could be improved, we should have the courage to say so.

We have the experience to lead and inform the debate.

The board will identify priority areas of reform for action.

For the current year, there is major work to be done in the areas of criminal justice, conveyancing, welfare reform and adoption, where the government has already tabled draft bills for the coming parliamentary session.

The law reform board is supported by the Law Society's law reform team, practice directorate, parliamentary unit and press office.

Our most important work is done by the specialist committees, covering areas such as company and revenue law, conveyancing, crime, family and mental health.Membership of those committees is drawn from some of our most experienced practitioners.

The strength of the board is that it will be able to take a multi-disciplinary approach to law reform and will be able to work across the present committees, drawing in expertise from all sides.Law reform is one of the Society's great successes.

The board needs to ensure that its importance is recognised throughout the profession and that the leadership of the Society is also recognised.

ANGUS ANDREW The chairman of the representation board, is the council member for West London.

He founded Osbornes of Camden Town after qualifying in 1973.

He is now a consultant with the firm and specialises in landlord and tenant law.

The representation board is about giving the Law Society's trade union activities a clearer focus and a higher priority - whether it be opening the Indian market to our firms, maintaining a level playing field for high street conveyancers or getting a fair deal for legal aid practitioners.My aspiration is that the board will cut through the bureaucracy and provide a clear sense of direction.

All too often the Society's work has been characterised by a failure to make decisions, and if I have a philosophy it is that any decision is better than no decision.

Contrary to popular belief, there are some great people at the Law Society but they are still buried under a labyrinthine committee structure.

Take the Legal Service Commissions (LSC) proposed quality kite mark.

It has seized the quality initiative and could spell the end of Lexcel.

Erudite papers have been written and considered at length and yet we still do not have a policy.

The danger is that by the time that we have developed one, the LSC kite mark will be a reality and we will, to a large extent, have ceded the regulation of high street firms.The board will have to make some difficult decisions.

The Access to Justice Act prohibits the use of practising certificate fee income for pure representational work.

That work must be funded from profits generated by the Society's commercial activities: in reality that means the Gazette.

The brutal truth of the matter is that if we go into recession the advertising revenue will dry up and there will be no profits.

In that context, is it sensible for the Society to continue investing considerable annual amounts in supporting its existing groups and sections? They provide a valuable service, but is it not reasonable, in most cases, to expect their members to fund them? Given all the threats facing the profession could not the money be more wisely invested?The acid test will be ability of all the boards to resist special pleading and to make the decisions that need to be made if the Society is to move forward.

It will be a tough nut to crack, but with a new corporate structure and Janet Paraskeva as the chief executive it's the best and probably the last chance that it has got.

Ken Byass The chairman of the finance & resources board, is the council member for Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland.

He is the senior partner at five-partner Moss Solicitors, where he specialises in conveyancing (mostly commercial) and some commercial/company work.

Mr Byass is a past chairman of the Law Society's property & commercial services committee, authorisation casework committee, and consumer & commercial law committee.

He currently chairs the Law Society's e-commerce working party and sits on the remuneration certificate appeals panel.

Mr Byass is also one of the Society's nominated representatives on the government's home-buying review group.

The purpose of the finance & resources board is to get a proper grip upon the finances of the Law Society and to ensure that expenditure properly reflects the intentions of council, while at the same time supervising the exploitation of the Society's resources to best advantage.

To achieve the first of these objects it will be necessary to bring forward an indicative budget to the council much earlier than has been the case in the past and to provide council members with sufficient information to compare expenditure on a year-by-year basis.

At the same time, we have to bear in mind the requirements of section 47 of the Access to Justice Act 1999, which prohibits the Society from expending practising certificate fee money on much beyond the core activity of regulation.It is equally important that we turn to account and develop those resources which we already enjoy.

Hitherto, there has been little co-ordination in this respect.

For instance, a recent review of the charges made by the Society for its various services showed a quite amazing and illogical diversity.

The Law Society's trading not only finances those activities which fall outside section 47 but also subsidises the practising certificate fee (projected subsidy of 4.7 million for 2002).

In this respect we are heavily reliant upon profits from the Gazette, which may be adversely affected if a recession comes.

We intend to conduct long-term planning based on a five-year cycle in contrast to the previous practice of hand-to-mouth, year-by-year planning.

All long-term plans of this kind are subject to disruption by unforseen circumstances but we hope that our planning will be sufficiently robust to enable the profession to gauge with some accuracy what the Society is likely to cost in future years.It will be for the council to say what money should be spent and what its priorities are.

It will be the new board's duty to impose the financial control necessary to meet the council's set objectives.

However, in one important respect the board differs from previous committees and sub-committees.

While the treasurer and board members are elected, the board has an executive function and is not a policy committee.

I am sure that the board will recognise its duty as the council's policeman of expenditure, but it is equally important that the council recognises that it has effected a delegation to the board, and that the board must be allowed to exercise its functions in the manner it thinks appropriate.