Support

We support members to meet the challenges of a recovering legal services market and economy.

• Our services and support embrace technology to help sustain, recover and grow the profession.
• Our work promotes legaltech, wellbeing and helps members adapt to the new ways of working.
• Our careers work champions fairness and progression, supporting unemployed and under-employed members in an uncertain market.

A founding core objective of the Law Society is to act in the interests of the profession.

Every Scottish solicitor gets the same qualification to practise. However, what our members choose to do with that qualification is broader and more diverse than ever before. Where members practise is changing too, with more living and working outside Scotland and outside the UK altogether. We want to be a professional body which caters for all these different needs, including our new nonsolicitor associate members.

The scale of the challenge from COVID 19 and the economic impact is immense. Whilst the legal sector has shown considerable resilience through previous economic shocks, the size and circumstances of this downturn is like none seen in the history of the Law Society. Our response needs to reflect the size of that challenge and the fact different parts of the profession are being impacted in very different ways.

We have already taken the unprecedented step of reducing expenditure and using our reserves to provide immediate financial help to the profession. We also stepped in to help firms and in-house lawyers defer their Scottish Legal Complaints Commission levy. Our responsibility now is to build on this short-term support and take practical and meaningful action over the next two years to help the profession recover.

Those solicitors and firms who can adapt quickly to the ‘new normal’ have a huge opportunity to recoup and even prosper. We need to play a role in helping them. Equally, there will be many talented legal professionals who regrettably face redundancy, unemployment or underemployment. We want to work with them to protect their legal career and ensure overall solicitor numbers are at a level to ensure clients can access quality legal services in every part of Scotland.

We realise that the events of 2020 have been a deeply unsettling and distressing time for members. It is why we must prioritise work around wellbeing, good mental health and challenging stigma in the profession.

This must come over and above the core and critical services we provide and which our members value. We must remain the ‘go to’ body for professional advice on practice issues and serving clients to the highest standards. Our flexible training and development programme must satisfy all the differing needs in the profession, ranging from core legal knowledge to the essential people skills now needed to succeed in today’s legal services market. That must be coupled with support for the technological revolution facing the rofession. New ways of working arising from this global pandemic will only serve to quicken the digital pace of change.

It is through our support work that we want to drive the change needed toimprove equality and diversity. In these next two years, we will continue to deliver on this key membership priority. Our commitment is to ensure every person with the determination and talent can enter the profession, but can also reach reach the highest levels of it. That ability to progress needs to exist, irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, or financial background. This drive for diversity must reach our judiciary through our collaborative work with the Judicial Appointments Board.

To provide support and services which are valued, we know we need to have a deep insight into our members’ needs and wellbeing. It is why our engagement, right across the profession and to all sectors, will remain a priority. It will require a continual two-way dialogue that means we are open, accessible, responsive and can adapt to changing priorities.