The Law Society is planning a ten-fold rise in the threshold for mandating a special general meeting of the organisation, citing cost considerations and best practice elsewhere.
Other planned governance changes include amending the eligibility criteria for certain seats on the Society’s 97-strong council.
The proposed constitutional reforms are flagged today in an article for the Gazette by chief executive Ian Jeffery.
Currently, only 100 Society members are needed to trigger an SGM for a specific purpose, equal to 0.05% of the 216,000-strong membership. There have been just two such meetings in the past 15 years.
At the first, in 2013, solicitors passed a motion of no-confidence in the then president and chief executive over their handling of negotiations with the lord chancellor about changes to criminal legal aid. That meeting cost an estlmated £120,000 to organise, according to the Society.
The second took place last year, when dissident conveyancers failed to secure a vote of no confidence in the Society over controversial changes to the TA6 property form.
‘The Society’s threshold [for an SGM] is well below those of comparable organisations, which typically range from 1% to 5% of their membership,’ Jeffery writes today. ’Increasing the threshold 0.5% – equivalent to 1,000 solicitors - would bring us closer to, although still below, modern practices and would represent better value and use of resources for members as a whole.’
Jeffery maintains that the threshold of around 1,000 members would be ‘easily achieved’ in today’s social media landscape, ‘where support can be rallied almost instantly’.
At the Society’s annual meeting in October, the Society will also seek approval to update eligibility criteria for certain council seats to reflect changes in the market and firm sizes, and to formalise the shift from paper ballots to electronic voting in council elections.
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