The Gazette 1967/71

priate that the private citizen wishing to assert his rights with legal aid should be confined to a panel of salaried lawyers paid by and responsible to the state as their employer. It is therefore suggested that legally aided civil litigants should be repre sented by private practitioners of their own choice. The principal objection to a professionally administered civil aid scheme as stated by Mr. Desmond Greer in a recent article in this journal is that lawyers tend to congregrate in the com mercial centres of big cities and can seldom be found in the poorer areas. This may be a valid objection in cities like London, New York or Tokyo, with populations in the 10m to 20m, but it has little relevance in Dublin, Cork or any part of Ireland. Even the least affluent of our citizens have little difficulty in finding their way to solici tors' offices. It is unlikely in the foreseeable future that conditions in Dublin will become so difficult that an injured person living in Ballyfermot or Finglas would not know where to find solicitor and counsel. There is need for guidance parti cularly in the field of social welfare legislation and the growing complex of regulations affecting the citizen at every turn. The Law Society and the Solicitors' Bar have taken the preliminary steps towards setting up a Citizens' Advice Service to fill this need. It will be operated by solicitors and it is hoped, members of the Bar, with the assistance of solicitors' apprentices and students at King's Inns. A skeleton student service has been in operation for some time. Under a state controlled and paid legal aid scheme, staffed by salaried solicitors the practi tioner would enjoy the same independence, with responsibility only to the client and to the pro fession as now exists. In time, a large amount of litigation would be diverted away from private practitioners to the state-sponsored body. The existence of a strong corps of private practitioners is essential to a healthy judicial system. This in turn depends upon the availability of professional business in the Courts. The absorption of the large proportion of litigated claims which would fall under the state controlled legal aid scheme would in the long run result in the extinction of a large part of private practice, and such independent advocacy and litigation as remained would be come the preserve of a few lawyers acting for wealthy companies and corporations. This was

recognised in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland when the present system of legal aid was established. The question of cost must loom large in con nection with any state-financed scheme of this kind. It does appear that the estimate of £200,000 to £250,000 per annum given by the Minister for Justice as the cost of a civil legal aid scheme in the Republic is very high on the basis of the available information from Northern Ireland. Under a professionally controlled scheme a large part of the administrative work is done on a voluntary basis by the profession itself. Local committees of solicitors assess the means of the applicants, with the assistance of Social Welfare officers, and decide on the prima facie merits of each case before certifying it for assistance. Under a state controlled scheme the work would be done by highly paid officials either lawyers or adminis trative civil servants. A large part of the state expenditure on civil legal aid in Great Britain and Northern Ireland is in connection with divorce and matrimonial litigation. There is a high ratio of success in negligence claims in which costs are recovered for the benefit of the fund. The latest reports of the Northern Ireland scheme have not yet been published. When they are available they should be a guide line to the cost of a similar scheme in the Republic. Eric A. Plunkett, Secretary of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. (Published in Leargas, the journal of the Irish Institute of Public Administration). SOCIETY OF YOUNG SOLICITORS At the Autumn Seminar held by the Society of Young Soliciors in Galways on 9th November 1969 Professor Kaim Caudle delivered a lecture entitled :— LAWYERS —STANDARDS AND PRODUCTIVITY The first part of the lecture dealt with the economic environment of Society. It was stressed that there had been in Ireland an increase in real income of 50% in the course of ten years. If the present rate of increase were to continue, it would tend to double our standards approximately every 126