Tha Law Society’s AGM this year will be held virtually on Wed 14th October at 2.30 pm.All members are entitled to attend but you need to register your attendance via the website and will need your SRA registration no to do so. I have forwarded the link to your administrator Julia Saunders but you can easily go direct.
Apart from the usual formalities when Simon Davis will hand over as President to David Greene after a distinguished fifteen months (his term having been extended for three months because of the pandemic), there are two important motions for consideration.
The first relates to the composition of Council itself. I have been on the committee looking at this and insisting that a complete network of geographical members is essential so that all solicitors feel there is someone reasonably local they can get to know and who can stick up for them on Council. I am pleased to say that my view has been supported by Council members and the proposal that was passed gives 46 geographical members which should do the job. I stuck out for 48 but was outvoted. Sadly this means that our seat in future will be shared with Nottinghamshire and I very much regret this but have admit that many other Council members have to cover greater distances and attend more Local Law Societies. Other similar changes have been made elsewhere. Feel free to vote against the proposal when it comes to be confirmed at the AGM.
The second motion is being proposed by the Junior Lawyers who want to limit the time one can spend on Council to 12 years. Council debated this before the pandemic and rejected the idea. The main reasons for rejection were:-
1. Corporate memory can be very useful especially in something like the Law Society where senior staff change fairly frequently.
2. Why shouldn’t constituents vote for their choice of representative as long as they like? Everyone comes up for re-election every 4 years.
3 There is already a regular turnover of members so a rule of this kind is wholly unnecessary. I have analysed the figures from the current diary and out of the 95 members 53 have been on Council 5 years or less,and a further 15, 8 years or less.
So over 70% of present Council members have sat on Council for less than 9 years.
The 19 who have been Council members for more than 12 years are either Past Presidents (7 including current office holders) or extremely valuable contributors to our deliberations and the adoption of the proposed rule would leave the Law Society run by a very inexperienced group of people. It takes a good couple of years to get into the job.
I would urge as many of you as possible to attend the AGM and vote against the motion.
Whichever way it goes I expect a poll to be called for from the whole profession. I am one of many who think the cost of such a poll (apparently over £100k) is quite the worst way to be spending members’ money especially during a pandemic when so many fear for their future.
Changing the subject completely I would urge you all to write to your MP to object to the government’s proposal to break the terms of a treaty it signed only months ago. The Law Society has been prominent in expressing the view that the rule of law is not negotiable and that the credibility of the country is being sacrificed.
Michael Williams