You may be astonished to learn that one of the difficulties the Law Society experiences in trying to help solicitors is that it finds it difficult to obtain all the details it would like about the members of the profession. This is because the SRA not the Law Society collects the necessary information under the current system. Moreover the SRA is not particularly interested in the same information and there have been considerable difficulties arising from their reluctance to hand over such information as they have.
At a meeting in London last week I learnt that the simple solution to the problem is to use the information collected by the Law Society directly under the ‘My Law Society’ heading, but for this to happen everyone would have to sign up.
Registration is free and joining should take only a couple of minutes (or at least that is what it says if you google ‘My Law Society’).
The idea of building a comprehensive list of solicitors by this method would be easy and would greatly facilitate the Law Society’s efforts to support all solicitors throughout England and Wales in whatsoever practices they operate. However, making everyone cooperate and getting them to sign in may be grossly over optimistic. It would therefore be very helpful to me to know how extensive the take up has been so far amongst DDL Society firms.
Could you please let me know by email – mwilliams@bemerton.co.uk :-
- Has your firm signed up?
- How many solicitors in your firm have signed up?
- What proportion of solicitors in your firm have signed up?
Armed with this information I would be able to assess whether it is realistic for this solution to be adopted or whether other methods need to be taken to put the Law Society in the position when it really has the information it needs. The situation is completely absurd and it is with great regret that I have to say that only limited progress has been made despite the Law Society’s best efforts.
This is why the ‘My Law Society’ route would be so simple to cure the problem provided all solicitors make the effort to register. Everyone needs to understand it would be worth their while but that is easier said than done.
On a completely different topic, all the post Brexit talk seems to be about trade. The government needs to be pressed to ensure services are properly considered and taken care of. Failure to get things right in this area would be a disaster for legal services generally and the same would obviously apply in other services sectors. Anything anyone can do to keep up the pressure on our elected representatives in this area would be most appreciated.