Looking at my previous report in the summer I said I thought we were then living in a parallel universe, which I then confidently assumed would be of short duration.
That parallel universe now seems to be our new normal and it will probably feel very strange going back to our old universe, if and when that is possible.
I see that I covered a very large amount of ground in my summer 2020 report. I can update that by saying that my encouragement to receive enquiries from individual solicitors has borne quite a lot of fruit and I have had a constant rewarding dialogue with individual members about particular problems. Indeed I was really gratified to see a response from one member who had recently retired and, although he had never had reason to deal directly with the SPG, he had received all our communications and said he had been very grateful to have known that we were in the background in case he needed help.
That is the sort of comfort we wished provide. Obviously there will some – hopefully more – people who want to be specifically involved in the executive committee and attend conference when we are able to hold this again, but there are many people who will be glad just to read our email updates and know that they can call on us for support when necessary.
What I hope we can do more of now is to involve our members with webinars making it much easier to be involved and interact with colleagues. I know that our Chair, Penny Raby and our Vice Chair, Jo Connolly, are keen to continue those and provide a regular line of communication with our members.
My last communication with members was to encourage a response to the Law Society’s members vote on the reconstruction of the membership of Council, firstly by the reduction in the geographical seats and the increase of seats for specialist bodies such as ourselves, and secondly the limitation of terms of service to 12 years for Council Members. While that limitation won’t have any effect on myself, having only served one four-year term as Council member expiring next October, it will potentially impact on my colleague council member, Lubna Shuja, who in October completes eight years and the next four years will be her last under the new limitation.
It is very lucky for us and for the Council that she will have a further four years because, as I’m sure you will know by now, she has been elected by her colleague council members to be the Deputy Vice President in the coming year which means that, barring accidents, she will be Vice President next year and the President of The Law Society in the following year 2022/2023.
That will be a very proud moment for the SPG to know that The Law Society is so ably represented by one of their number. Her election was a clear mandate by her fellow council members on the basis that out of five candidates she received more votes than all the other candidates put together.
We are all glad to know that the two SPG Council seats which were provided to us in about 2002 in my first year on the Council Membership Committee (CMC) were, after a degree of lobbying, agreed to be maintained for the Group. There is recognition that SPG provide a significant service for a significant number of solicitors now in the region of 4500 out of the total electorate of 200,000.
What was somewhat disappointing was that only 12,000 Law Society members voted in the election, and I hope that a significant number of those were sole practitioners following my recommendation to you that you should exercise your democratic right to decide on how the professions representation should be recognised in the Law Society Council.
One of Lubna’s tasks, at which I believe she is going to excel, is to improve the engagement of all members of the profession with The Law Society, as the SRA continues to disengage itself from the Law Society leaving the Law Society to be able to carry out it’s true representative functions for solicitors and let the SRA get on with the regulatory functions. For too long I believe members of the profession have seen the Law Society as linked to the regulatory function and therefore difficult to relate to for support.
Continuing with the theme of elections in the febrile post Brexit and Trump election periods, I should alert you to the fact that the resolution passed recently includes a resolution that the existing system of nomination of any council member by their relevant Group should be replaced by an election of the relevant council member by the full constituency that that member will represent. In the past, possibly because of convenience, organisations such as ourselves nominated council members through the executive committee. As a result they were probably likely to be members of the executive committee.
That was seen as out of touch with modern practice by the CMC. Accordingly unless anything else happens, changes of your council members in future need to be on the basis of election by the whole constituency of 4500 sole practitioners, if one could obtain their details and probably it is only our group which has an accurate database.
The difficulty with that is that it could quite easily happen that one or both of the council members may not be in tune with the executive committee, in the same way that Mr Trump does not appear to have be in tune with the American legislature. I was able to persuade the Chairman of the CMC at the last council meeting approving the wording of the resolutions, that an exception for nomination could be made in exceptional circumstances.
Whilst we believe that this year’s reappointment of council members will be under the nomination system because no electoral databases will yet be in place, the decision will arise with future appointments and I believe you will be canvassed for your views as to the way in which they take place. If there is a significant wish by our members for the continuance of nomination then that in my view would be grounds for exceptional circumstances for nomination to continue because we can say that the SPG covers the whole spectrum of sole practitioners and speaks for them and all members have an entitlement to make their views known at annual general meetings.
I appreciate all this is somewhat esoteric dialogue in circumstances where we are all fighting to keep our heads above water by working through lockdown but we need to be looking at a time when we hope lockdown is a thing of the past.
I think it would be helpful to comment at this stage on the SPG relationship generally with the Law Society. Over the past years there have been various ups and downs where we were given the prospect of either going in-house with The Law Society as a division or staying outside independently and as you know we chose the latter. A last hope was expressed in the recent dialogue by the now retired chairman of the CMC that we should “return to the fold” but I think that is unlikely to be echoed by any other of the existing officers and executives of the Society and we are moving forward to a comfortable relationship with the Society encouraging its support through close liaison through our Council Members, and now the fact that one of those Council Members is an officer of the Society.
I hope that we will be able to look to ways of cooperating with the Law Society in the future in the services provided to members. What must be borne in mind is that the Law Society has a large budget and a large staff to be able to provide the administrative backup. Our administration and activities, although ably supported by our sponsorship is largely on a voluntary basis.
That brings me to a sensitive issue but one which is important to a significant number of the members of our Group. When I joined the SPG , its executive committee was almost 100% non-diverse. Over the last 10 years we have achieved a completely diverse executive committee representing a very diverse membership. The last six or seven Chairs of the SPG who I have been privileged to work with have been from ethnic minorities, although it is strange to me to describe them as such.
As a result of the recent racial injustices in America the President of the Law Society has announced a Law Society initiative to investigate the Society’s historical links with the slave trade and colonialism. This research was proposed by the Law Societies black and minority ethnic staff network and will be overseen by a steering group of members of that network.
My research indicates that slavery was outlawed in Britain in 1807 and by Britain in other parts of the world in 1843. The Law Society was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1831. Whilst as lawyers, we all know the value of research, I hope this subject is objectively researched, and not produced with any intention of promoting a political agenda and creating divisions amongst lawyers generally, to any detriment of the harmony which I have always seen within the SPG.
As any good lawyer should, I declare an interest – in colonialism, possibly being one of the last practising lawyers to have worked in a colony, the Seychelles, namely as a resident magistrate from 1973 to 1975 before its independence in 1976. I hope I took with me, and possibly left there, a few of the principles of equity which Lord Denning was inspiring at that time.
Professional indemnity and Loctons
Our relationship with Loctons continues to flourish on the basis that of the relationship with the various individuals involved and the fact that Loctons indicate that they feel their relationship with us is developing as they hoped.
I can say that when I have had to refer any professional indemnity issues to them on behalf any members, the response has been immediate and professional. It is effectively because of the financial support they provide, that we do not to look to our individual members for subscriptions to run the Group and have the resources to run successful conferences, without having to worry about whether the executive committee will be personally made bankrupt in the process! I hope you will always give them an opportunity to quote for your PI renewals.
The new term date for the closure of the SRA backed run-off support for those who have gone beyond their five-year insured run-off cover, is approaching quickly in October this year. My colleague Lubna is monitoring the Law Society group which is looking for a way forward. Hopefully there will be sufficient funds to cover those whose closure preceded the end of the Solicitors Indemnity Fund in 2000, but there will have to be other arrangements for those who have closed since then. As soon as we learn anything further on this we will circulate the membership.
Clive Sutton, Honorary Secretary. January 2021
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