The Gazette 1955-58

4. The maintenance of high standards of legal education and professional conduct to the end that only those properly qualified so to do shall undertake to perform legal service. 5. The promotion of peace through the develop ment of a system of international law con sistent with the rights and liberties ofAmerican citizens under the Constitution of the United States. 6. The co-ordination and correlation of the activities of the entire organised bar of the United States. I pause now for a moment to meditate and to examine the extent to which we are in line with current Law Society policy, and to consider in what directions we can extend our activities. The result is not unsatisfactory. It was only in 1954 that the Solicitors' Act became law enabling us as a body to guide and control the profession. Since then we have brought into operation a new and improved system of education designed to ensure that well-trained, learned, practical and competent lawyers will be available in the future. We have brought into operation too the professional practice and conduct regulations designed to eliminate the malpractices and unworthy conduct which have from time to time in the past brought discredit to the profession and we have framed Accounts Rules and Regulations designed to ensure that the members of the public in their financial dealings with solicitors are fully and effectually safeguarded. But that is not enough. We must always be applying our minds to ways and means of giving even better service. The first direction in which one's thoughts turn is that, in contrast to the majority of other countries, there is no legal aid system, either with the assistance of the State or on a voluntary basis. I am proud to say that in practice it has not made much difference in that any person with a good and valid claim has never had to fear that he would be unable to have it presented on the ground of lack of means only, but a citizen in such a case has to depend upon the favour of the legal profession. Perhaps for this reason there has been no public demand, but expressing my own personal opinion might I say that the time is now ripe when the State should fall in line with other countries and among its services offer, in deserving cases, a contribution towards the cost of maintaining and prosecuting claims for essential rights. And if we are to ask the State to help should .we not ourselves consider, perhaps through the Bar Associations, the provision of some scheme, either of consultation or on a lawyer referral basis, whereby a panel of solicitors

would be made available to help persons seeking and requiring legal advice. There is also the need for the Law Society to adopt a new approach in its system of Public Relations. In the past, the Society has hidden its head under a bushel and in consequence there has been in existence in some quarters a wholly mistaken conception of solicitors and their work and their remuneration. I suggest, and I am expressing my personal opinion, that the time is now ripe to undertake a vigorous good-will programme so that the public will understand solicitors and the solicitors' profession. This could well take the form of articles contributed to the Press and period icals, of lectures, perhaps broadcasts, talks with the basic object of providing information to the public and of the need for legal advice in situations where lawyers are not normally consulted and of acquainting them with their rights, privileges and liabilities. It follows, too, that another direction in which the Society can help the public is by the scrutiny of impending legislation, and by the publication of constructive criticism designed to draw the attention of Deputies and the public to provisions which, though innocuous in appearance, may well affect citizens in their public and property rights. Above all, we should always be on guard to object to provisions giving Ministers and their officers power to decide questions affecting individual rights without the safeguard of review by a judicial tribunal. The complicated machinery of a modern State tends to require the regulation of its functions by Statute, Ministerial Order or administrative direction, and the result has been to make the legal .system a jungle which is impenetrable to those who have no safe guide. It is here that the task of the legal profession has become increasingly important and necessary; so that the public need representatives in whom they can repose confidence and who can guide them. We are now living in one of the periods of profound revolution. Challenged are the institutions which we have believed to be the fruit of man's long struggle towards freedom. Impugned are the religious faiths that for us are the core of conscience. The world has gasped in horror at the recent events in Hungary. The hearts of the freedom loving world have gone out in sympathy to the gallant fighters of Hungary; and their appeals for help • have been answered and will be answered in the most generous and practical way. The lesson is obvious. The peace of the world depends on the general observance of the rule of law—a rule based on principles of Christian charity