Time for the members to elect the President and VP

Solicitors need a leadership who will promote and defend their interests and the work that we all do. We need a President and Vice President who perform well not just in Council committees but before the Parliament, in the press and on our television screens.

The law may have once been purely a profession but now it is also a business. Like other businesses we rightly have to communicate how we really are Scotland’s second caring profession, whatever field you specialise in. Scandals such as that of Christopher Hales and former MP Michelle Thomson harm this, and the Society’s poor media response exacerbated it. We must do better.

To deliver this we need to directly elect our leadership. It is a very sad state of affairs that 51 Council members, and I have no reason to criticise individuals, are currently the only people entitled to "elect" the leadership. A leadership which over 11,000 practising solicitors rely upon. Of these 51 Council members, nine are not solicitors. They really are the less than 1%.

I wish John Mulholland well in his appointment as Vice President, but let’s hope in the future we solicitors get to directly elect our leadership.