Background
The OECD examined the provision of legal services as part of a larger Study on Regulatory Reform in Ireland.
Recommendations
The OECD Report noted earlier reforms in the legal profession which allowed solicitors to advertise and removed the compulsion of scale fees published by the self-regulatory bodies and recommended that further reform was needed. While the Report made few specific recommendations,317it identified a number of areas for further reform: the removal
of remaining impediments to competition among solicitors; opening up the provision of conveyancing services; direct access to barristers; and allowing barristers and solicitors to practice in other business forms.
318 Information in this section has been in part provided by the Law Society of England and Wales and in part taken from its website, www.lawsoc.org.uk
319 The Law Society of England and Wales was established under Royal Charter in 1845 and was empowered to enforce national standards of conduct and education.
320 The College of Law is the largest provider of postgraduate legal training in the UK. The College only provides legal courses and has six centres: Birmingham, Chester, Guildford, London (2) and York.
321 Information in this section has been taken from the website of the Bar Council www.barcouncil.org.uk, and has been verified by the Bar Council of England and Wales.
322 The General Council of the Bar of England and Wales was founded in 1894 to represent the interests of barristers.
Appendix 3: Regulatory Regimes in other Common-Law
Jurisdictions
This section describes the regulatory framework as it affects competition in other common-law jurisdictions. The jurisdictions explored are:
• England and Wales; • Northern Ireland; • Canada; • New Zealand; and
• the following Australian territories: New South Wales; Queensland; Victoria; Western Australia; Australian Capital Territory.
England and Wales
England and Wales, like Ireland, has a legal profession with two separate branches: solicitors and barristers.
Solicitors318- Education:
The Law Society319stipulates the standards for training courses for solicitors (Legal Practice Course and Common
Professional Examination /Graduate Diploma in Law), which are provided by a wide range of third level institutions and The College of Law.320Legal Practice Courses are designed by individual universities and The College of Law. While
all the courses have to meet the written standards stipulated by the Law Society, they are all unique. This means that there may be some variations in how the subjects are taught and assessed.
Solicitors - Representation and Regulation:
The profession is regulated by the Law Society whose regulatory powers are underpinned by statute: the Solicitors Act 1974, the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 and the Access to Justice Act 1999. The Law Society is also the representative body for solicitors in England and Wales.
Barristers321- Education:
A number of third-level institutions provide the compulsory Bar Vocational Course. All students must be admitted to an Inn of Court before registration on the Bar Vocational Course. The Inns are principally non-academic societies providing collegiate and educational activities and support for barristers and student barristers. The Inns alone have the power to call a student to the Bar. Only those called are able to exercise rights of audience in the superior courts of England and Wales as barristers.
Barristers - Representation and Regulation:
One of the objectives of the Bar Council322is to promote the Bar’s interests with Government, the European Union,
the Law Society, International Bars and other organisations with common interests. It is also the Bar Council that makes and implements policies affecting the Bar on education and rules of conduct.
Barristers - Other Information:
Direct access to barristers has now been extended to the public in general for both advice and legal representation in court. However, barristers are prohibited from accepting instructions directly in areas of practice such as immigration or asylum work and family or criminal proceedings (subject to some exceptions). Where the brief involves a court appearance, the barrister is prohibited from doing the work of a solicitor in preparing the case. Barristers are not obliged to accept direct access work.
An employed barrister may supply legal services (defined to include representation in court) to his employer. Barristers in England and Wales are permitted to advertise their services.
Conveyancers:
In England and Wales, Licensed Conveyancers were introduced in 1987. Conveyancers are regulated by an independent statutory body – the Council of Licensed Conveyancers. The Council requires all conveyancers to have academic qualifications, professional indemnity insurance and to pay into a fund for the protection of client monies.
Review and reform of regulatory framework in England and Wales
In July 2003, Sir David Clementi was appointed to carry out an independent review of the regulatory framework in the legal services market in England and Wales. The Clementi report recommended:
• the creation of a new Legal Services Board (LSB) to provide oversight regulation; • statutory objectives for the LSB;
• that regulatory powers should be vested in the LSB, with powers devolved to Front Line Regulators, e.g. Law Society, Bar Council and Council of Licensed Conveyancers, where they meet LSB standards;
• that Front Line Regulators should be required to separate their regulatory and representative functions; • the establishment of a new Office for Legal Complaints to handle consumer complaints;
• the facilitation of legal disciplinary practices, to allow different kinds of lawyers to work together.
The Government accepted Sir David Clementi’s recommendations and set out its agenda for reforming the regulation and delivery of legal services in a White Paper entitled “The future of Legal Services: Putting Consumers First”. A draft Legal Services Bill setting out the proposed new regulatory framework and principles governing the legal profession was published in May 2006 and has recently been reported on by a Parliamentary Joint Committee.