The Gazette 1967/71

provision of the necessary financial resources if it is to be implemented. It is recommended that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised to twelve years. The Society submitted a memoran dum to the Commission and welcome the publi cation of the report which is commended to members who are interested in this urgent social problem. Decimalisation: In Autumn, 1969 two bulletins were published and circulated to members with the Society's Gazette drawing the attention of the profession to the necessity of preparing for decimalisation. D-day will be Monday, 15th February 1971. Fortunately the problems affecting solicitors' offices are far less complex than those of traders and manufacturers but the profession must take all necessary steps to effect a smooth change-over both for their clients and for their own internal office system. It is advisable to make preparations to have the office and clients books of account written up and balanced before D-day if possible so that all balances on the accounts can be con verted to decimals. The two bulletins already published by the Society are being up-dated with the assistance of the Decimal Currency Board and will be re-issued in the near future with the Society's Gazette. Members who attended the recent Seminar at Sligo of the Society of Young Solicitors had the opportunity of hearing a valuable talk on the subject by Mr. Morrison an official of the Board. General: I make no apology for referring again to the delays in various Government offices which make much of our work so frustrating. Complaints continue to be received about the delays in the Estate Duty Office and the Land Registry and even the most efficient solicitor may suffer from the bad impression given to the public owing to delays in Government departments due to under- staffing and other causes. Of course there are members of the profession who put things on the long finger. I wonder how many of us could put our hands on our hearts and say that none of the delays in our offices are our own fault or the fault of counsel. I think it behoves us to put our own houses in order before, or as well as, critic ising others. Clearly, we must all consider con stantly how we can improve our efficiency, whether by amalgamation or in other ways, by more mechanization and so on. I believe that it

is essential to have partners or to have some method of sharing the load. Greater efficiency is not the only reason for amalgamation or at least for taking a partner. It is a fact that 99% of the claims against the Compensation Fund are against one-man businesses. The 1970 solicitor has to be a man of parts, so many parts that it is becoming daily more impossible for the solicitor practising on his own to do all that is expected of him. He may have to be an advocate in the District Court in the morning and do work far removed from the drama of the Court in the afternoon. His work may range from acting for the buyer of a house to making a will or forming a company or he may be giving advice on tax problems, en forcing a contract or drawing up a brief for a barrister to present a case in Court. He is also likely to be consulted and asked to advise on matters which are not strictly legal matters at all but in which his experience and knowledge are invaluable. The only way the profession can give the sort of service which clients expect nowadays is by providing specialists in tax, crime, commercial work, trusts, town planning, litigation and other subjects. We are inviting a number of solicitors offices to participate in a time costing exercise. We recognise of course that in the average solicitors practice at the moment some jobs must subsidize others and it would be valuable and instructive to find out to what extent particular work is re munerative and what work would have to be refused or left undone if purely commercial or economic considerations were taken into account. Recently I was privileged to attend the National Conference of the Law Society at Bristol. In his Inaugural Address the President, Mr. Godfrey Morley said among other things and I quote "more and more in recent years we have been forced into the position in which the financial security of solicitors has become a matter of nagging anxiety. There is little conception of the burden ,of overheads we carry or the need we have to maintain a proper balance in the practices we run. The arduous and anxious work of liti gation has been rendered less and less economic to the solicitor and when the signs of this become apparent we find ourselves subjected to criticism because we seem to be choosing only the more remunerative work while neglecting work which has always been the fundamental element in the lawyers work namely the maintenance of the lawful rights of citizens". Our problems here are very similar. Our burden of overheads has been 131