In the third instalment of a four-part series documenting the development of the profession, Elizabeth Cruickshank tells how solicitors came through austerity between 1953 and 1978

In 1957, the Law Society President, Sir Edwin Herbert, advised students that the reputation they wanted was that of the mythical Jones.

'He's not a flashy chap.

He's not perhaps the greatest lawyer in the country, but he really will try to get you what you want.'

At that time, even in London, many clerks still worked at Dickensian high desks and stools in offices heated - until the 1956 Clean Air Act - by smog-producing full-tar coal fires.

But by 1978 photocopying machines were ubiquitous, VAT was an accountable tax, and the profession's gender profile was radically different.

In 1957, the first year when the Law Society's annual report listed the number of women solicitors with practising certificates, only 356 held them.

One of these, Rosalind Bax, later the first woman equity partner in a major City firm (Coward Chance, one of the constituent firms of what is now Clifford Chance), was the first woman to be awarded the Travers Smith Scholarship and the first woman to win the Worshipful Company of Solicitors of the City of London Prize.

Only 20 years later, the Society recorded that 7.33% (2,408) of all solicitors with practising certificates were women.

Money again

By the mid 1950s, the legal profession was seriously competing for the services of educated young people against industry, the Civil Service and local authorities, all of whom offered attractive salaries, benefits, and promotion prospects not dependent on the injection of personal capital.

The number of practising solicitors increased by only 5% between 1939 and 1955, and in 1962 the Society president bemoaned a 'serious shortage' of approximately 5,000 solicitors.

Young solicitors started at 600 to 700 a year, but there was doubt that more than a third of the profession actually earned more than 1,000, the salary of a good managing clerk.

One ill-rewarded solicitor in private practice complained in 1956 that 'two trade unions in a northern shipyard are threatening to go on strike for a guaranteed weekly minimum wage for their members.

These wages, which are stated not to include any overtime, are quoted, and they are substantially more than the salary I receive as a solicitor of five years' experience since qualifying'.

Traditionally drawn from comfortable middle-class families whose wealth had accumulated in an era of low income tax and death duties, solicitors now felt the imposition of post-war taxation severely.

Their retirement prospects had acquired a bleak aspect, as they were finding it difficult either to save or to recoup their investment in their practices by selling them for the customary two to three times net income.

Only after representation by the Society did the government agree in 1956 that solicitors could deduct pension contributions from their pre-tax income.

Fusion

In 1953, the Evershed Committee recommended that the Supreme Court, the administration of justice system, and legal education should all be reformed.

A minority also considered that amalgamation of solicitors and barristers would be in the public interest - and debates on the topic once more dominated the legal press.

The Law Society president stated that 'he had no wish to see the fusion of the two branches but unless the bar did something to improve its position, it might happen'.

In the Gazette's view, the exclusion of '90% of the legal profession from consideration for judicial office was one of the least satisfactory consequences of a divided profession'.

In the end, both branches concluded that they preferred the status quo, provided that admission to the bar and to the solicitors' profession were open to each other.

One of the great bones of contention between the two professions had been the unreciprocated ease with which barristers could become solicitors.

As early as 1877, barristers of five years' standing could become solicitors by passing the final examinations, whereas solicitors had to give up practising as solicitors for at least two years before they then underwent the same training as barristers.

Gradually, this restriction was eroded until in 1969 the Bar Council reduced the pupillage requirement for solicitors of three years' standing with adequate advocacy experience to only six months.

The Courts Act 1971 and the Administration of Justice Act 1973 then gave solicitors increased access to the courts by enabling solicitors of ten years' standing to become recorders, and possibly circuit judges after an additional five years.

Solicitors had also been consistently irked by restrictive bar 'etiquette'.

Barristers were paid an honorarium, formerly gold sovereigns dropped into a little black bag attached to their robes, but now negotiated by their clerks.

Solicitors argued that the lack of a binding contractual relationship either with solicitors or their clients resulted in barristers accepting instructions with no legal obligation to provide them or to perform adequately, taking instructions and then not appearing at court while expecting to be paid, and providing substitute counsel at the last minute.

A particular irritation was the entitlement of a junior attending with a QC to a fee equivalent to two-thirds of the QC's fee, even if the junior's fee would have been less if instructed independently.

In 1964, the Law Society sent a memorandum to the Bar Council suggesting reform.

The bar insisted on maintaining the honorarium 'fiction' and the no professional liability rule, but conceded that the two-thirds fee rule should no longer apply to juniors appearing with QCs.

The bar's attitude was probably dictated by perceived financial necessity.

For many barristers, existence was a constant struggle; even as late as 1972, the median income of the 4,000 practising barristers was 2,300 a year, and 30% earned less than 1,000.

As usual, there were discrepancies.

In 1976, the average QC attracted 19,500 a year in fees and a top QC could produce up to 60,000.

The evolution of training

The practice of demanding premiums from articled clerks gradually declined, until by the late 1960s they were charged by only 5% of firms, and most articled clerks received a small salary, although the Law Society plenary session on salaries for articled clerks concluded that 'it was generally more appropriate to make some allowance to articled clerks rather than to pay them a living wage'.

The Society's acquisition of law tutors Gibson & Weldon in 1961 was followed by it setting up College of Law branches in Guildford, Chester and London.

In 1967, it approved in principle the recommendation of the Ormrod Committee on legal education that by 1980 solicitors' training should consist of a law degree, followed by a one-year professional course and three-year articles.

But the reality of a shortage of solicitors postponed the first part of the package.

For the time being, A-level entry and five-year articles remained, although 60% of solicitors in 1977 were in fact university graduates.

Bar students had already demanded reform of the training system and in 1964 had staged a 24-hour sit-in, demanding the abolition of dinners, a reduction in fees and changes to the system of calls, condemning overcrowding and the negligence of the Council for Legal Education.

Supporting the Ormrod Committee, the council itself considered that the bar's minimal entrance requirements had 'resulted in the admission of students whose educational attainments offer no reasonable prospect of qualifying as a barrister at law'.

The proposed increase in standards of the bar examinations unaccompanied by higher entrance standards would result in many students wasting years of their lives and hamper the teaching of the more able students.

A new educational institution - the Inns of Court School of Law - was required.

Law for the wider community

Promoted by the Law Society 'in the context of the adversary system to help to see that justice is done and is seen to be done', the duty solicitor scheme was first established in Bristol and Cardiff in 1972.

By 1983, there were duty solicitors in 107 magistrates' courts in England and Wales, vastly increasing the number of defendants with legal representation.

It was not uncontroversial, and it was suggested that the scheme was a commercial rather than altruistic response by certain firms, which sought an entre into the lucrative world of criminal legal aid as their conveyancing fees were squeezed.

Uncertain about its stance over solicitors operating in neighbourhood law centres after the passing of the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1972, the Society had to be persuaded by the Lord Chancellor to rethink its initial refusal in 1976 to give local solicitors a dispensation to set up such a centre in Hillingdon.

The antipathy from some practitioners arose from a concern that those with little or no experience would find a ready-made clientele, and in the absence of real advertising, could get their names in the local newspaper to attract business.

However, Harriet Harman, the present Solicitor-General who herself worked in Brent Community Advice Centre, felt that such centres strengthened the community by giving local people proper access to legal services.

The abolition of the property qualification for jury service by the Criminal Justice Act 1972 made it more likely that ordinary people - and particularly women - would be judged by their peers.

Conveyancing crackdown

Legal aid gave solicitors access to a much-expanded client base and the post-war impetus to produce 'homes fit for heroes' ensured that conveyancing would be profitable.

Solicitors had now accepted the utility of the Land Registry, while - as ever - complaining about registration delays.

By 1968, 55.6% of solicitors' income, but only 40.8% of their expenses, came from conveyancing.

The public may have been fascinated by the new day-time television series 'Crown Court', but it had become strenuously critical of the solicitors' conveyancing monopoly and particularly of scale charging.

Inflation had raised the price of the same property from a pre-war 400 to 3,000 in 1962 and the conveyancing charge from 7 to 70.

As so often, the increased value of the house was forgotten and the public mind concentrated only on its increased outgoings.

The profession was investigated by the Prices and Incomes Board in 1966 and again by the Monopolies Commission in 1970 and 1974.

The Law Society's argument that a profession expected and had a moral right to be paid for its skills and services did not entirely convince the commission, which concluded that solicitors were overpaid for conveyancing.

In January 1973, conveyancing scale fees were abolished, just when the early 1970s property slump began.

This, combined with the Solicitors Remuneration Orders of 1953 and 1972, meant that solicitors in non-litigious and non-criminal business could fix their own charges subject only to the client's right to request Law Society certification of a reasonable charge or to apply to the courts for taxation.

Solicitors were now competing on grounds of price between themselves for dwindling conveyancing work, but they retained their statutory monopoly on wills and probate through the Solicitors Act 1974 provisions relating to executors' affidavits and executors accounts.

Another legislative change was to have arguably even more far-reaching consequences for the profession's profitability.

In 1967, 70% of firms consisted of only one or two partners and only 10% of more than five partners, but the Companies Act 1967 removed the restriction on partnerships of more than 20.

Of course, this did nothing to ameliorate the uneven distribution of solicitors across the country (Bournemouth had one solicitor to every 913 inhabitants while Bootle had one for every 24,736), but everything to encourage the growth of larger, more lucrative practices.

Goodbye to clerks

Permitted by the Law Society since 1925 to use its rooms for examinations and meetings, the Solicitors Managing Clerks Association now considered that the term 'managing clerk' was insufficiently indicative of the role.

In 1963, the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX) was formed to reflect the increased recognition within the profession of a group that in many cases had been prevented by lack of finance rather than ability from qualifying as solicitors.

Those with sufficient experience could become fellows and were exempt from the examinations instituted in 1955, leading to the managing clerk or legal executive certificate.

By 1968, legal executives were so valued that their names began to appear in the Law Lists, now the The Law Society's Directory of Solicitors and Barristers, and by 1976 they were almost as numerous as qualified solicitors.

But among all its serious concerns, the profession was not shy of revealing its foibles through the pages of the Gazette with a candour which would not be possible today.

One nervous young solicitor at the 1955 Law Society conference, 'found no ashtray in which to put the stub end of my cigarette, and the only course open was to let it casually fall to the floor and stamp on it hoping that no one was looking.

At that moment, I saw a very senior member of the Society's staff do likewise with the remark that there was really no alternative.

We were all at home'.

Four years later the reviewer of Lawyer Heal Thyself commented on the author's sudden disclosure that he had 'a very accommodating mistress.

She is an absolute paragon of a mistress, such a woman has never really existed.

She was always on tap, never offended at being kept waiting or having appointments cancelled, she lets him have a little sleep afterwards and gives him barley sugar to buck him up on the way home...

But the idea of solicitors and the idea of mistresses don't mix.

Possibly there are some clever fellows among us who manage this intricate business but in sexual affairs solicitors are always meeting the failure, which makes them cautious.

As a profession, we may manage a little furtive sin here and there but I would guess that our mistress-ratio per thousand ranks pretty low.

It may just be that we are sensible'.

- We would like to thank Catherine Pease in the Law Society library and Linklaters for help in illustrating this feature.

- The next instalment will be published on 25 September.

Elizabeth Cruickshank is a solicitor and author of Women in the Law, which will be published by the Law Society Publishing next month