Shaping your future

In 20 years’ time, the personal computer will have the capacity of the human brain; in 50 years, it will have the capacity of the entirety of mankind. Long before that, clients will communicate through Facebook or similar technology. Worrying or challenging? Opportunity or threat? Fact or fiction?

At the Society’s conference “The Legal Profession in Five Years’ Time”, keynote speaker Richard Susskind painted a picture of the future in which lawyers have a real role to play. However, that role will depend on the profession reading the signs and keeping pace with change. The Society’s members showed their appetite for that by giving a green light the day before to the Society’s policy on alternative business structures. The vote at the annual general meeting was decisive and work will now start in earnest to design the regulatory approaches necessary to support more flexible business regimes. The challenge now is to make sure that whatever is produced not only works but meets the broad aspirations of the profession.

At the AGM, I was struck more by what brings solicitors together than by what might divide us as a profession. Although there were diverging points of view, everyone who took part was well informed, measured and constructive. And all shared the same commitment to the future wellbeing of the profession and the integrity of the solicitor’s badge. Having approved the policy paper The Public Interest: Delivering Scottish Legal Services by a considerable margin, maintaining and strengthening a sense of unity must now be amongst our principal objectives.

Of course, the hard work that has gone into arriving at today’s position really only takes us to the start of the process. Much more work must now be done. The ABS working group will meet again soon to determine what the next steps are and how best we can work with government. Key to this will be the regulatory model. The policy paper outlined a framework of such a model. Now we must start adding the detail to ensure that the regulation of ABS is sufficiently robust.

We are in no doubt what must lie at the heart of any system providing legal services, and that is the core values of this profession. I know from the AGM that we can all agree on that: so let us now come together behind that common purpose and move forward for the benefit of all concerned.

Legal aid: a partial answer

What the ABS debate throws up, of course, is the complex and difficult issue of access to justice and how to safeguard that in a changing market when resources are scarce. At the conference, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, announced a small but welcome increase in civil legal aid payments. I suspect the minister knows that will only ever be a sticking plaster solution. As was apparent at the AGM, the profession is prepared to play its part in a dynamic and forward-looking Scotland. But others have a crucial role too, not least government itself.

The ABS policy paper stressed the importance of government intervention where access to justice and publicly funded legal assistance are concerned. Unfortunately, the shortfall in civil legal aid funding is all too evident. Advice deserts already exist in parts of the country, and firms in other areas have said they can no longer afford to provide this service to the most vulnerable in our society. The rise in the unit level is long overdue, though the Society is encouraged that ministers have at least listened to the profession’s concerns. But the problem will remain and we have to continue to press government and work with it to try to develop innovative solutions to meet changing needs. 

The wider view

May is generally a busy month and this year, before the Society’s AGM and conference, I met with representatives of other jurisdictions at the International Bar Association conference in Amsterdam – discussing, for instance, the effect of ABS with high street lawyers from Australia. I also took part in debates on issues that should lie at the heart of our professional concerns: skills transfer to the developing world; corruption, abuse and threats to the rule of law; and the overall reputation of the profession.

It is right that we should spend time getting our systems and processes right for the profession and the public in Scotland. It is right that we should be planning for a future that may be beyond our imaginings. But it is also right that the rule of law is at the centre of what we seek to achieve. As Baroness Helena Kennedy said at the charity dinner following the conference – and I paraphrase her words – society works because of law, and it is our responsibility and our privilege as lawyers to guarantee that rule of law in order to secure its benefits, both economic and otherwise, for society as a whole.