“This is the Law Society’s Brexit moment,” says Christopher Digby-Bell, the head of legal at a London property investment business, succinctly encapsulating the latest trauma to beset the 191-year-old organisation.
The body that represents more than 133,000 practising solicitors in England and Wales has just lost another chief executive — and this one went with a bang. Catherine Dixon, who had been the boss at Chancery Lane for about two years, fired off a 1,000-word resignation letter that pulled no punches. She described the society’s ruling body as “moribund, old-fashioned and bureaucratic”, and argued that progress on corporate governance reforms were moving at such a snail’s pace that it was not worth her while staying. So Dixon is off to take the reins of an agricultural college in the north of England, adopting the view that dealing with silage is preferable to solicitors, despite being a lawyer herself.
Her frustration is no surprise to long-term observers of the society. Dixon’s predecessor, Des Hudson, bolted after losing a profession-wide vote of no confidence amid criticism that the society’s leadership failed to oppose government plans to cut criminal legal aid. His predecessor, Janet Paraskeva, spent much of her time trying to patch up years of back-biting among elected office-holders. Then there was Kamlesh Bahl, the lawyer who was set to become both the society’s first female and ethnic minority president, who resigned amid allegations of staff bullying; and Robert Sayer, the former president, who was charged by police with making a forged passport (the charges were discontinued).
And those are just the highlights of a troubled recent history. Digby-Bell has been an on-and-off member of the society’s council for many years, one of five representing City of London solicitors. “Every membership organisation has a time when it has to ask itself: are we sure that what we are doing is really what our members want?” he says. “Or is there a hidden seam of people out there who feel left out and forgotten, the muted and disengaged who don’t say anything, but who feel that things are not headed in the right direction?”
Modernisers — of whom the current president, Robert Bourns, who also represents the Square Mile, is one — argue for a wholesale restructuring of the organisation along the lines suggested by a recent governance review, which was rejected by the council in a narrow vote.
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Reformers favour creating a streamlined main board comprising appointees and elected members, and also including non-lawyers. Some also suggest that the president be elected by the entire profession and not — as now — just by the council, and that presidential terms should be extended from one year to three.
“Who else will do the law reform and other work that the society currently does in the public interest?
According to Digby-Bell, the present council should be “phased out completely over the next two years” and replaced by a body of 25 that meets quarterly instead of the seven to eight times a year now. “The future of the Law Society is on hold while the ruling council gets its act together and decides whether it is going to support the president’s vision of a modern, agile, efficient system of governance,” he says.
Yet plenty on the 100-strong council say: crisis, what crisis? Michael Garson, a longstanding member, told The Times: “I do not subscribe to the view there are traumas” at Chancery Lane. And one former president suggested that Dixon’s departure had more to do with her “management style” and rifts with some senior staff than a disagreement over corporate governance. Dixon declined to comment.
However, for solicitors in high-street firms or global outfits in the City, does it matter if the Law Society reforms or implodes? Regulation of the profession is now completely delegated to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which is pushing for total independence.
Funding is also a potential problem. The society receives most of its budget from a slice of the practising certificate fee, which the SRA collects and solicitors have no option but to pay. The regulator and many solicitors argue that the model is unfair and that the society should raise its own funds.
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Would solicitors pay voluntarily to join a membership organisation? One senior figure close to the society maintains that if the organisation is to survive it must become smaller — at least halving its staff of more than 400 — and much more commercial. Says the commentator: “It needs to offer services — practice management advice for high-street firms, education and training awards that will carry weight with the public — that solicitors will be willing to pay for.”
Bourns is adamant that the society will modernise and survive. He will use his remaining months as president to push for streamlined and more efficient governance, but cautions against ditching the current funding model. “Who else will do the law reform and other work that the society currently does in the public interest?” he asks. “I’m fed up with people beating up the Law Society and failing to recognise all the work it does in the public interest and not in the vested self-interest of the profession.”
A noble view — but will solicitors be happy to keep paying for it?