Aiming high

It is setting the bar high to aim to be a world-class professional organisation. Yet Scottish solicitors should expect nothing less from their Law Society – and would complain about it more than they do at present if it decided to settle for second best.

We regularly hear of how the Scots training and qualification is recognised as a mark of quality in many parts of the globe. It would be fair to say also that our best firms can hold their own in almost any company, as is evidenced when they are judged or rated against their peers elsewhere. They deserve a professional body with ambitions to match.

Achieving such high aims requires a mindset that will not accept anything less than excellence, together with sufficient self-belief in the ability to deliver and a focus on how to do so. External communications reflect this by conveying the sense of purpose and mission.

These thoughts were prompted by sight of the Society’s corporate plan for 2015-16, covering its priority actions for the 12 months from 1 November. The plan has to be read in the context of the five-year strategy Leading Legal Excellence, published earlier this year, which sets out the standards the Society hopes to achieve by 2020. Thus the aspirational statements that introduce each section of the plan are to be seen as just such: the uniformly upbeat tone indicates that eyes and minds are firmly fixed on outcomes, even if they are not as yet fully realised.

The Society believes it has no choice in the fast-changing world of legal services provision but to think outside the box in terms of the people (or entities) it regulates, and yes, admits to membership – in categories and on terms that the new plan tasks it with defining. But it has to carry the present membership with it, of which some have still to be convinced of this direction of travel, and, more broadly, are quick to pounce on any perceived failings, whatever level of substance these are ultimately found to have. There may be no pleasing the cynics, but somewhere along the way it should be acknowledged that things get messy sometimes.

If the Society achieves everything in its 2015-16 plan, it will indeed be entitled to think it has had a very good year. Whether or when someone achieves world class depends as much on what happens in the world, and (unless there are objective measures) how it sees them. How you get the world on your side is a subject that has many facets.