Regulation of Legal Services in Northern Ireland

A Consultation Paper

January 2006

Introduction

Law Centre (NI) is a non profit provider of legal services to advice agencies in Northern Ireland and to disadvantaged individuals. It provides a specialist legal service (advice, representation, training, information and policy comment) in four areas of law: immigration, social security, community care and employment law.

The services are provided to almost 500 member agencies.  Members include local Citizen Advice Bureaux, independent advice agencies, local solicitors, trade unions, social services, probation offices, constituency associations of local political parties, libraries and other civic organisations.

Law Centre (NI), a limited company and a charity, operates under a waiver agreement with the Law Society of Northern Ireland, allowing it to employ solicitors. The company directors of the Law Centre are members of its management committee, which is elected by its membership, together with some appointed members.

Law Centre (NI) legal advisers consist at present of nine solicitors with Northern Irish practising certificates, three employed barristers who previously practised in England or in Northern Ireland, three specialist advisers who are not legally qualified and a US attorney.

Comments on the operation of the current regulatory system

Our experience both in practice and anecdotally (from dealing with callers unhappy with the level of service from solicitors) is that complaints handling falls significantly short of best practice expected from a professional body.

By way of illustration, information on what to do if unhappy with the service provided by a solicitor, barrister or other legal provider is not readily available.  The form issued by the Law Society on how to complain is not user friendly. 

To the best of our knowledge, a complainant is not routinely interviewed after lodging a complaint.  In one case a Law Centre immigration client (whose first language was not English) was not interviewed at all after lodging a serious complaint about a local solicitor who handled his asylum claim prior to the case being transferred to the Law Centre.  The subject of the complaint was interviewed yet his response was not put to the complainant at all before the complaint was adjudicated on.  Further, a complainant has few (if any) outlets to seek assistance with helping him or her to complain.

Further, the Lay Observer has a severely circumscribed and limited remit in examining how the Law Society deals with complaints.  In effect, there is no proper independent scrutiny of the handling of complaints.

As a result, we would recommend that the Legal Services Review Group audit the Law Society and Bar Council’s complaints procedures against acknowledged best practice.  We also recommend that there should be external regulation of complaints against solicitors and barristers.  Given the size of the jurisdiction there is a compelling case for a single body to take on this role for both parts of the profession.

Many people in our client groups would find it difficult to access appropriate information to allow them to decide whether they are receiving a good quality service. This may be because of literacy or communication problems, learning disability or lack of confidence. Changes to regulation of the legal profession must prioritise ensuring that the most vulnerable clients are able to rely on the quality of the legal services they access and be able to raise concerns or complaints where necessary. It is particularly important that broader grounds for complaint than at present are introduced which allow the investigator to get to the heart of the quality of the service provided.

It is noted that there is a lower pro rata level of complaints in Northern Ireland. Given the size of the jurisdiction, and Law Centre (NI) agrees that it is possible that there is a perception, as discussed at paragraph 3.20 of the consultation document, that there is no point in complaining because it will not be dealt with outside of the legal ‘family’.  We think the Review Group should conduct an exercise by way of focus groups or other polling to test public opinion on the confidence of self-regulation by the legal profession.

We believe there is a strong argument in favour of separating the regulatory and representative functions of the professional legal bodies.  In our view, this would be in the best interest of the professional bodies and consumers. 

Competition

Quality of legal advice and representation must be protected for consumers of legal services. Legal education and training as well as supervision arrangements are important in this context. Many non-legally qualified advisers in the voluntary sector are giving legal advice at present and the sector works to ensure the quality of that advice.

In terms of representation, there are some barriers which could be removed without a necessary impact on quality. In some instances it would improve the service for the client. We would like to see rights of audience in the higher courts extended to solicitor advocates, as in the rest of the UK.  We would also like to see employed barristers being given full rights of audience in the Northern Irish courts. For example, Law Centre immigration specialists who are barristers are unable to provide advocacy in the High Court leaving us to instruct counsel with less experience in this area to appear.

We agree that the restrictions which affect the types of alternative business structures able to offer legal services should be reconsidered.

The Law Society can currently prevent organisations including those in the voluntary sector from employing solicitors who can practice through their statutory powers to grant or refuse a waiver to practise.  A waiver can also be granted subject to conditions.  While we are open to scrutiny of organisations wishing to employ solicitors to practise this should not be controlled though the Law Society statutory powers to issue a waiver.