The Gazette 1967/71

be useful, and we are assisted by the Solicitors' Law Stationery Society Ltd. in this. It is intended to make available a wide range of thes most practical documents in the very near future, whilst the installation of an I.B.M. Magnetic Tape Typewriter in the Society is under consideration. The advantage of this machine would be that alterations in the standard precedents which might be collected and stored on tapes could be made readily available to members, and the Society would hope to issue a book of precedents to members, who could then indicate when placing orders with the Society the precedent to be copied, the names to be inserted and other minor alterations and the form could then be swiftly typed from the machine as an engross ment ready for signature. I noted a suggestion made at the last meeting of the Law Society in England that for ease of reference, Acts and amendments of Acts might be published in loose leaf bindable form so that amendments could be slotted in at the appropriate place. Speaking of amendments, I would exhort the Department of Justice to introduce legislation similar to that of Sections 42 and 43 of the Building Societies Act 1874 which provides that Vacates of Building Societies Mortgages relate back. I cannot see any reason why we should not bring all Mortgagees into line and thus avoid an immense amount of difficulty for purchaser's Solicitors on closing. They must wait some times for quite a long time for a Release to be executed, stamped and registered before thier own clients and their Mortgagees can perfect their own Titles by registration. A similar section is all that is required, and I am assured by Senior Conveyancing Counsel that there cannot be any valid grounds for objection to such a course. In due course it is hoped to provide a service here similar to that of the Solicitors' Advisory Service in England, whereby experts, with a special knowledge of Solicitors' account and book-keeping and the most effi cient methods of office management might be available to members. A service of long standing and the extent of which may not be fully realised is that provided con tinually by the Court and Offices Committee of the Privileges Committee, who deal with a wide variety of members' problems. PROFESSIONAL NEGLIGENCE INSURANCE As members will have seen from reading the Annual Reports of the Council for the past few years the Society has diligently pursued its investigation into the possibility of obtaining professional negligence indemnity insurance for members on reasonable terms. This is an extremely difficult, and to date intractable problem. Professional negligence indemnity insurance is an absolute necessity for a practising solicitor both for his own protection and for the protection of his clients. Many of us have claims free records after many years in practice but this in itself is no guarantee against the emergence of an unexpected claim at any time. We are a profession which is permanently on risk to our clients. The fact that a solicitor has practised for many years without making a mistake is in itself no assurance that a catastrophic claim may not be around the corner. Somerset Maughan .wrote a novel or short story, the title of which was " The Unguarded Hour ". The theme that everyone sooner or later, sometime in his life acts in a careless, irrational or uncharacteristic manner, sometimes with trivial or unknown consequences but at other times leading to disaster. Even the most careful solicitor, in fact even the most careful professional man in any sphere of life must

at least once in his professional career act in a manner which falls within the legal category of negligence. He is a lucky man if that occasion is one which is unattended by any material loss or damage. Accepting that each of us must have his unguarded hour it is obvious that professional negligence insurance is an absolute necessity for every practitioner. We are faced with a number of difficulties. In the first place the insurance companies are not competing for this particular type of business which in itself is an indication that over the field as a whole the profit must be small. A further difficulty of our particular problem is the possibility of certain offices being unable to obtain any insurance cover against professional negligence. It is known that once a claim has been made the premium will be raised sharply and there may be a disinclination on the part of the underwriters to renew the policy. The Council have considered this for a long time and they have come to the conclusion that the best available method of ensuring that all members of the profession will be able to obtain the best terms possible is to form a group, preferably of the entire profession but if this is impossible of a large number of offices who would be willing to insure through the same agency on a mutual or similar basis so that everybody in the group would be able to obtain insurance and as the result of disclosure of the available statistics the partcipants would be satis fied that the premiums were reasonable. Two surveys have been made by the Society during recent years. In the first conducted by the Society some years ago 775 offices received a questionnaire of which 496 or approximately 63% were returned. Members were asked to say whether they thought that the Society should try to organise a group scheme. Practically all the replies were in the affirmative. The questionnaire also asked for information as to the number of office personnel including employers, whether members were insured against profes sional negligence, particulars and amounts of claim, amounts of cover and similar information. Valuable information was extracted from the replies. On the basis of this survey it appears that approximately 300 offices are interested in group insurance. In order to interest the insurance companies in any group scheme a substantial premium income would have have to be obtained. Anything less than a gross premium income of £60,000 per annum would hardly attract any attention from the insurers. It is obvious to me that the majority of offices which do carry professional negligence indemnity are grossly under insured. I cannot conceive that any office today could hope to be adequately covered without a minimum insurance cover of £10,000. In many offices the amount must be considerably larger depending on the annual turnover of the business which would in itself increase the risk of claims as to number and amount. If the entire profession, over 800 offices in all could agree among themselves to form a group pro viding a substantial premium base it would no doubt be possible to get insurance on a reasonable term because a gross premium income would be sufficiently attractive to bring a number of insurers into the market. The advantage of a group scheme would be that the Society would obtain reliable information annually as to the number of claims and the causes of losses. A group scheme would also insure that members in the group would be certain of getting insurance. A member would not be dropped suddenly or have his premium raised merely because of a single claim. On the other hand a member who showed a consistently unfavourable record 68