Notes from the editor at the end of the 1950s, reflecting on the implementation of legal aid. A letter from a Council Member looking back on certain changes throughout his career.

Law Society’s Gazette, January 1960

Notes of the month, By The Editor
End of a DecadeBy the time this issue of the Gazette reaches members the 1950s will have ended… I doubt whether in the history of the solicitors’ branch of the profession any other decade can have been more important than the 1950s. It saw, in its first months, the beginning of the Legal Aid Scheme with the implementation of Part 1 of the 1949 Act, in so far as it related to actions tried in the High Court. In subsequent years further sections of the Act have been brought into force, notably the provision of legal aid in relation to actions tried in the County Court and the introduction of the Statutory and Voluntary Legal Advice Schemes…

Letter from a Council MemberIt is now just fifty years since I entered articles, and in that time I have naturally seen many changes – among them the typewriter brought in to universal use (nearly everything was handwritten in 1909) and the feminine invasion. The sight of a woman employee was unknown then, and this state of affairs continued, I think, until the war of 1914-1918.

But one of the principal changes I have seen… has been in the general attitude about articled clerks, who are now much better looked after than they were. At the time I was articled, so long as one’s principal was content to take one, nobody else bothered much about it, and the articled clerk had little or no contact with The Law Society, beyond making sure that his articles were duly registered…

Today things are different. Law School is compulsory and principals, generally speaking, take more interest in the education and training of their articled clerks and feel a greater sense of responsibility about them than was the case 50 years ago. These changes, in my view, are all excellent.

G F Pitt-Lewis