Good for Chancery Lane, bad for the profession

It might be a perverse observation but while the Law Society’s decision to cancel its annual conference is a smart bit of politics for Chancery Lane, the move also marks a fairly uninspiring day for the profession.

It is certainly true that the conference had rapidly declined in recent years in terms of interest from the City and the media. An event that before the body’s mid-90s implosion would have attracted 1,000 solicitors from a genuine cross-section of the profession had become a gathering mainly for conference junkies and high street backwoodsmen.

Killing it off solves the problem and sends out the message that the society is serious about cutting costs. Given that the event was probably beyond rescuing as an effective forum, it’s the right call (apparently the first one by incoming president Andrew Holroyd). As someone who has personally dealt with the society for some time, it is also clear that there is a new attitude at the once-infuriating body. At least some insiders seem to realize the need to be relevant to the profession in the face of the upcoming Legal Services Bill.

However, stand back from the legal goldfish bowl and you have to say that it’s hardly good news for the profession that it has come to this. The Law Society, with sweeping regulatory powers and an operating budget of well over £100m, is - in theory - one of the largest and most powerful professional bodies in the world. That it has struggled to get support from the profession has clearly contributed to the low public standing of lawyers in the UK and the continued failure of commercial law firms to get their due for contributing to the British economy.

City firms usually blithely retort that they don’t need bodies like the Law Society to represent them as they can do so themselves. Well, having observed City firms for years, I’ve come to the considered conclusion they couldn’t lobby their way out of a paper bag. City law firms are dreadful at plugging into policy-makers or getting voices heard in the public debate, far worse than comparable professions, so we should treat such claims with caution.

A comparison with the American Bar Association (ABA) is also telling. While the ABA shares more flaws with Chancery Lane than might be initially apparent on this side of the Atlantic, its profile and ability to lead debate is light-years ahead of our equivalent, despite the body having less power and cash than the Law Society. It is no coincidence that in the US the legal profession is synonymous with policy clout and lobbying panache.

Will anything change? Nope. The UK legal profession will keep its head in the sand as the biggest reform of legal services ever attempted in the world clunks its way through Parliament with scant influence. The only surprise is that it is the Law Society that appears to be recognising the danger and trying do something about it rather than those supposedly super-slick City firms.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com