The Gazette 1967/71

lawyers may compete with the profession and are free to negotiate their own fees. Furthermore, it should be noted that solicitors' fees are controlled even for those in which they have no monopoly. Anyone can negotiate a settle ment or compromise of a claim or a property deal. A non-solicitor doing such work can negotiate his fee or commission and will not be subject to the Taxing Master. A solicitor doing precisely the same job, as a solicitor with the additional expertise required of him, will be subject to the statutory requirement of submitting a Bill of Costs and to taxation if required. The so-called monopoly was created in the public interest; it gives the client the protection of the solicitors' professional training and integrity and the protection of the Compensation Fund. Solicitors' statutory fees are fixed only in the sense that a solicitor may not — (a) charge above them; (b) hold himself out as willing to undercharge for the purpose of attracting business. He may accept a lower fee, or nothing, for a particular job. It is in the area of competition that the con fusion with monopoly mainly arises. It is, however, quite incorrect to say that "Solicitors oppose com petition between themselves by arguing that this will reduce the quality of their work", and is wholly inapt to them to ask if supermarkets provide worse value because they charge lower prices than the small general stores. Whilst monopoly eliminates competitors, standards of performance and behaviour do not. Solicitors are in intensive competition with each other on the basis of quality. As I have already pointed out in my comments on Professor Kaim- Caudle's earlier article on the professions in general, the volume of work which the professional practitioner builds up is dependent upon the reputation he has gained in the rendering of past services. Resources are not pooled, rewards are not shared. Supermarkets do not produce quality, they market it. The quality is the function of the manufacturer or the primary producer. Nothing can affect the standard of quality of a particular brand of a tin of peaches once it has been pro duced — not even the 3d. off expedient. What the supermarket can charge is a quantitative

assessment based on answering the question—how many XY articles can be sold, and, if XY are sold at a cut-price on Wednesday, how many other articles will be sold on that day because of the enticement of additional customers chasing the reduced XY? Undercutting when the quality is being sold by the producer is a wholly different matter. Cut- price practices have to be compensated for some how. What the solicitors' profession seeks to eliminate is competition between quality and less- than-quality. It is not a reflection on the profession, any more than it is on human nature in general, to acknowledge the fact that there are those who will produce at a price below accepted levels, compensated by a reduced if disguised quality. Skill, confidence, trust and integrity are not matters to put at risk. The Professor says that there is "little reason for thinking that absence of competition guarantees a high standard of work.'1 Of course, it doesn't. When quality is what is paid for, the product can only survive if it leads in quality. An economist should know better than to confuse quantitative with qualitative assess ment. Once more Professor Kaim-Caudle flies the kite of cross-subsidisation. It has become fashionable following the ideas of English writers like Abel- Smith, Stevens and Zander to condemn cross- subsidisation as self-evidently bad, but — (a) Solicitors' conveyancing charges are fixed not by the profession (as in the case of chartered accountants) but by the State operating through statutory bodies. The system has worked well in practice. By and large there are only few complaints from clients — cer tainly in regard to the large transactions which are the target of criticisms of these authors. (b) It is not inequitable that the wealthy client should help to subsidise the poorer. The State adopts the same principle in taxation. Many public services operate on the same basis. (c) The extent of cross-subsidisation is reduced by the regressive element in the conveyancing fee and further by the spread of registration of title e.g. in the case of unregistered property the rate declines to 1%, and in registered property to 0.375% above £10,000. (d) It is difficult to understand why commission charges are attacked when used by solicitors, 12