Douglas Mill: What is and what should never be
Reading time: 3 minutes
I wrote in February on The Burden of Compliance, having read the articles about the Scottish Law Agents Society and their survey of the profession. Happily, I was wrong and they did get a good response. Certainly more than enough for statistical significance.
And it was at least a neutral exercise unlike a fair few Law Society of Scotland surveys I have had brought to my attention over the last 15 years or so, along the lines of:
Do you think the Law Society is:
- Completely and utterly marvellous?
- Even better than that?
- The only reason you sleep soundly in bed at night?
The disproportionate pressure on small firms is so public that it is now freely acknowledged by larger firms – all of which have specialist compliance teams.
A growing percentage of high street firms are now convinced that the Law Society has an anti-small firm agenda. Strong stuff and probably not true, but wholly understandable.
But it got me wondering where the profession (if indeed we are still a profession) is going in what is now a post-collegiate world.
And it struck me – are Scottish solicitors the only profession in the world with two regulators and no professional body? I think so. Imagine doctors with two GMCs and no BMA.
The Law Society may convince themselves that they support high street practice, but their members in droves would beg to differ. Gone are the days of Bruce Ritchie being the go-to phone-call for a solicitor with an issue. Yes, go on the website, but that’s not the issue. It’s understanding. Empathy. Simply put, it is hard to believe that they care.
So what do over a thousand firms do when they face a problem?
Well, sadly the glory days of the LDU are long gone. God bless Jim McCann. Yes, there are still a few solicitors with an understanding of the pressure on small practices. Take a bow, Johnstone Clark.
Yes, SLAS continues to fight the good fight, but with very limited resources.
And formerly strong bodies, such as the WS Society and the SSCs, are now reaping the big firm policy decisions of the 1990s to drop them. “We are bigger, stronger and don’t need to waste our time and money on them.” This was one dimension of unconcealed arrogance which has impacted on recruitment and the attitudes of young solicitors, which will be my next article.
Douglas Mill writes in his personal capacity.
Share this article:
Subscribe to our newsletter to not miss articles like this one:
SUBSCRIBE
