DELEGATES at the congress pooled their experiences of efforts to assess and monitor the competence of lawyers in their various jurisdictions.The Secretary-General of the Law Society, John Hayes, explained how his professional body had drawn up a voluntary scheme of practice management standards (PMS) in response to demand by commercial law firms.'The lawyers approached the Law Society and asked for an accreditation scheme because some of their major clients had demanded evidence of their standards,' said Mr Hayes.'The Law Society could have said "No, we are not a manufacturing industry, we cannot have rigid standards." But in the end we were almost driven to producing our version of quality standards.

Then the Legal Aid Board took over the Law Society's administration of the scheme.

The Law Society could have fought against the LAB but this was the body which put out the money.' The immediate past president of the American Bar Association (ABA), William Ide III, discussed the problems raised by the ABA's 1969 model code of professional responsibility which attempted to address the matter of lawyer competence directly.'These codes gave no firm guidance,' said Mr Ide.

'The guidance only started coming through in the [course of] malpractice suits.

There was concern that this matter should not just be regulated by case law.'In 1983 the ABA composed the model rules of professional conduct, which begin by defining competent representation as requiring 'the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation'.However, Mr Ide said that case law was still the basis for assessing lawyers' competence.

In his background paper Mr Ide said that while the ABA's rules state that their violation does not automatically give rise to civil claims, in reality they have become the standard by which malpractice suits are judged.The senior vice-president of the Law Society of New South Wales, Norman Lyall, spoke of the problems facing his professional body in 1992 when it adopted a specialist accreditation panel and had to decide on the required standard of competence for lawyers.'Specialisation carries with it a connotation of competence and expertise within a particular field of practice,' said Mr Lyall.

'But it does not necessarily follow that a concentration of activity alone can bring about the result of competence and expertise.'GUIDES FOR GOING GLOBALExploring the potential for the global expansion of law firms was a priority for delegates at the congress.According to Isaac Shapiro, of the Paris branch of US firm Skaden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, establishing branches in a foreign country was an expensive and cumbersome method of globalisation.Mr Shapiro told the congress that the most promising globalisation technique was the creation of multinational partnerships.

He said they work not through merging firms in different countries, but through the absorption of lawyers of different nationalities by a law firm predominantly connected with one country.Another useful technique, said Mr Shapiro, was the occupation of desk space in a foreign firm in order to avoid the start-up costs of creating a local branch.Remarking on regulations governing cross-jurisdictional practice, Law Society Past President Mark Sheldon, of City firm Linklaters & Paines, said: 'Things have moved on a bit since I set up a branch office of my firm in New York in 1972.

Then there was a very real risk of my being prosecuted for the unlawful practice of law.'Mr Sheldon saw two possible outcomes from the proposed EU rights of establishment Directive.

Either the five-year limit on the right of establishment would be replaced by a permanent right, or the unpopular aptitude tests would be abolished and replaced by an additional alternative route to integration.LAW MOVES ONThe encroachment of law into areas traditionally dominated by doctors is a trend set to continue, British Medical Association ethics adviser Ann Somerville told the congressIn the Tony Bland case, where the patient was in a permanent vegetative state, the law rather than the doctors had defined what procedures constituted medical treatment, Ms Somerville said.

'A similar approach might be extended to non-PVS cases, such as very severe Alzheimers,' she went on.Ms Somerville said a case involving the sterilisation of a mentally handicapped woman in 1987 led to a storm of complaints from the medical profession.

Since then many doctors had welcomed the way the courts had clarified difficult areas of practice.NEWS IN BRIEF-- Night movesMussay Levin of Philadelphia firm Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz, told the delegates about the schemes his state had set up to improve access to justice.

A night court was set up and lawyers volunteered to work as pro bono judges who functioned as fully accredited judges.

They also introduced specialist courts.

The civil backlog in Philadelphia dropped from about six to two years.-- Oz aidIn Australia a number of states have self-funding contingency legal aid schemes, the senior vice-president of the Australian Bar Association, Murray Tobias QC, told delegates.

Litigants makes a small contribution to the legal aid fund, the lawyer is then paid from the fund, and if the case is won the litigant contributes 10% back into the fund.-- Right attitudeLawyers must learn to put aside their sectional and national interest, Bar Chairman Peter Goldsmith QC told congress in a keynote address.

'It is easy in the UK to become mesmerised by the division between barristers and solicitors.

Our clients are not served by such an attitude,' he said.-- Media clashWhile debating media regulation and cross-ownership the Right Honourable David Mellor QC MP, the panel chairman, clashed with the keynote speaker, Andrew Knight, director of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation Ltd and director of Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd.

Mr Mellor said that Mr Murdoch could no be a true champion of freedom of speech because he claimed he had taken BBC news off his Chinese satellite channel when the Communist government objected to it.

Mr Knight dismissed this as 'claptrap'.1995