No stopping the tide

The profession is facing great change. Not through its own wishes or the leadership of its Council pushing in one quixotic direction, but it is being storm-tossed by tides and gales blowing from other parts. The ABS sea-change has been created by the Governments north and south of the border, and we must bale, row, steer and navigate as best we can to save from foundering.

Enough of the marine imagery. The brutal truth is that as solicitors we are not masters of our own commercial destiny – the authorities, led on by an admittedly cockeyed consumer lobby, think that the legal profession and the provision of legal services need to be shaken up and modernised. Whether or not there is any merit in their objective, it is in the nature of Governments not to sit and say that the status quo is fine and/or dandy. Kenny MacAskill spelled it out: “No change is not an option”. What do the anti-ABS fraternity want us to do? Strike? Deny reality? Try to persuade the Government that lawyers are a special case? Hopeless.

Here’s the reality. We will get nowhere trying to hold back the tide – the Law Society of Scotland has tried to dissuade, to negotiate, to warn, but the movement to ABS is unstoppable – it’s already in place in England. It does practitioners no good at all now to snipe that the Society is sleepwalking into oblivion or hastening us to our own demise. None of that is remotely true. End of.

What we need to do is to box clever. Make sure our service is top-notch so clients want to instruct us. Adapt our businesses so that we compete and indeed expand. Take the high ground and up the stakes for competitors. And if an accountancy firm starts hiring lawyers, why don’t we hire accountants? Why don’t we look at other models with an open mind?

I step back and realise that I weekly – sometimes daily – refer clients to accountants, architects, independent financial advisers and others. Why should I assume that they can encroach on my territory and I can’t encroach on theirs, eh? Practitioners must wake up and understand that there is no complete division between profession and business. One depends on the other. And OK, we didn’t want to be shaken out of our comfortable almost-monopoly, but given that the world is changing, it is up to us to meet the challenge positively. No change is indeed now not an option.