News / General

We have received the following responses from a number of practitioners who attended a recent Law Society seminar on the proposed constitutional changes:-
RESPONSES IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:
1.
I thought the seminar was very informative.

I was glad that it was pitched at a fairly basic level (I have to confess to being slightly embarrassed at my lack of knowledge in this area given the length of time I have been qualified).

The explanations went a long way towards allaying my fears of the proposed new regime.

Thanks to Liz and yourself for organising this.

As was said at the seminar, it would definitely be beneficial for the Law Society to visit Aberdeen on a more regular basis to keep us up to date on such matters.

2.
As a newly qualified Solicitor setting out in the profession I wanted to attend the seminar to
(a) find out why the Law Society felt they needed to change the current structure and
(b) hear what my more ‘senior’ colleagues of the profession felt about the new proposals having been under the current ’regime’ longer than I.
(Please note my use of the word senior is meant only in the sense of having practiced longer!!)

If I am honest I arrived at the meeting knowing very little about the current regime but I left feeling that the proposed changes were not going to have such a drastic impact on what is there already. If anything I felt reassured as a new member that the changes were a much needed modernisation and the view was to encourage more members to participate in our Society, something which before now, I hadn’t given much thought to.

I very much enjoyed hearing what Bruce and Henry had to say and I found it very enlightening and useful.

Many thanks to those that helped organise it.

3.
Yes, worthwhile and informative as I gained some further understanding of the make up of Council and Committee and the philosophy behind the changes – whether I am in agreement is another thing – can’t truly say the concerns raised were fully answered.

4.
That’s a very good question. I left the session feeling quite despondent about the clear gulf between the career corporate governance suits and the body of busy solicitors in private practice and a feeling that there had not been much real communication despite everyone’s best efforts. You asked the question twice about why the constitutional changes are necessary and there was no simple answer given. What I took away was that the existing constitution is dated and worded in a way that makes it difficult to amend, whereas they want a more modern form that can be easily amended in future as they say it should be a living document and subject to frequent change. I have doubts about that as I felt that a constitution should be stable and not readily changed to meet whims or bow to political pressure.

The speakers assumed that we are familiar with the current constitution but of course many of us are not, so it was difficult to argue with their assurances that Council already has the powers that some had thought were vested in the members at general meeting. Sadly, most of us are too busy to spend the time finding out the truth of this!

My third and last point is that there seemed to be confusion about the number of lay members of Council and the regulatory committee and the role that they play and whether the changes affect that.

I wanted to ask whether the speakers have any difficulty in reconciling the Society’s role of representing its members with its apparently bigger role of complying with legislative changes affecting us and regulating us, and possibly to suggest that the Scottish Law Agents Society should expand to fill the representation role as a separate entity from the Society.

The conclusions (not the full text) from the SLAS response to the Law Society consultation read as follows :-
“This response agrees fully with the points made in the detailed response by Royal Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow which is available on the RFPG website http://www.rfpg.org/noticeboard:34 and these do not need to be repeated. There are the following additional observations on the proposed draft, as SLAS has understood it.
1. The legislature of the Society is to be split into three, the lower house (now the Council) with two upper houses, the Board (Article 7) and the Regulatory Committee (Article 11). The Lower House is in theory sovereign, but may not unduly interfere with the business of the Regulatory Committee.(Section3B of the 1980 Act). We are not persuaded that there is any need for a Board or that Council has any right to delegate executive power to a Board in the way proposed.
2. The Council will have up to30 elected members and the balance up to a total of 46 (or so) will be co-opted or appointed members. (article 4.2,4.4 and 10.5). Up to 9 of the appointed members will not be solicitors. This size of Council seems to restore the pre-2011 numbers and still seems overweight.
3. To comply with the 2010 Act half of the regulatory committee will not be solicitors.
4. The 17 or more unelected (ie co-opted or appointed) members of Council will each serve for an indefinite term, by tacit relocation, unless any of them resign or is otherwise evicted. (Articles 4.7, 4.9 and 4.13). This could lead to stagnation and institutionalism
5. A small but influential group known as the Nominations Committee drawn from Council and one other solicitor will recommend who sits on all these committees and who is co-opted or appointed as members of council. While it is good to be told of the existence of these committees, the operation of overlapping and heavily engineered Council, Board, Regulatory , Nominations and Audit Committees are far from transparent in their service to the profession or the public. It is not clear whether this committee is representative or regulatory in function.
6. The new class of member includes the 3000 nonpractising members of the public service who are exempted by statute from holding a practising certificate. It appears that they will have voting rights without paying a full subscription. Does this mean the costs of running the Inhouse Lawyers Group will fall largely on the private sector? Or is this what the section 3A protocol is intended to cover? If so details of the protocol should be included in the scheme under paragraph 3 (b) of Schedule 1 of the 1980 Act.
7. The additional powers attributed to the chair at general meetings (eg clauses 15.6, 15.7, 16.9, 16.10) are anti democratic.
8. It is not clear what is meant by ‘classes of association’ referred to in clause 18.
9. Under the new constitution the members will have no opportunity to challenge the accounts, as the Council will have approved them in advance of the meeting.(Clause 21(3)(c)).
10. The Audit committee is the only internal watchdog on the three houses, and need have no solicitors in its composition.(Article 10). It is not clear whether this committee is regulatory or representative in function.
11. The right of the membership of a Society to assemble is fundamental and the provision of clause 14.6 that a meeting must be presided over by the President, the Vice President or the CEO is an unwarranted interference with that right. This is recognised as a direct response to the lawfully convened meeting in 2010 which the then President refused to acknowledge as a meeting of the Society.
HOWEVER
12. The draft is not totally without merit and the proposal contained in clause 15.3(c) is seen as an improvement on the current provision. This could be effected as an amendment to the current constitution clause 13(6)
13. When technology permits, it would be helpful to introduce electronic voting as envisaged (but not provided) by clause 16 (2)(c) but at present this is premature as explained by the RFPG response.
IN CONCLUSION , given the possibly cataclysmic changes taking place within the profession it would seem advisable to postpone the plans for a new constitution until the impact of the 2010 Act, and the impact of the Regulatory Committee is more clearly understood.

SLAS Council member

The Law Society Council has on 30th March published its decision not to proceed with its plans for a new constitution for the time being. CLSS has said it intends to propose as an alternative that the size of Council be reduced.
http://www.lawscot.org.uk/news/press-releases/2012/march/news_300312_con...