The Gazette 1989

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1989

From the President . . .

natural justice or fairness of procedures. At all times they showed consideration for the position of candidates and carried out their statutory obliga- tions in a fair, reasonable and objective manner. In fact, it appears to me that the manner in which the examination was conducted, the results assessed and decisions reached by the Education Committee after care- ful consideration was exemplary". Another allegation is that in some way places were being kept for children of solicitors and I was quoted from a 1978 Council Meet- ing as having stated that " I could see no difficulty in having, say, ten places reserved for families of members of the profession". The remainder of the quotation which was left out was "all other things being equal". The truncation of that quotation clearly shows bias against the Law Society and I name specifically the Sunday Tribune in this connection. There never has been, is not and I hope never will be a policy in the Law Society to provide separate places for children of solicitors. I cannot put the posit- ion more clearly than this. The question of granting exempt- ion from the Final Examination/ First Part was debated at the July and September meetings of the Law Society when by a very large majority, it was resolved that all law graduates of Universities in the Republic of Ireland will be exempt from the entrance examination provided their degrees include passes in the six subjects of the Society's Entrance Examination. Non law graduates must pass each of six subjects, Tort, Contract, Property, Constitutional, Company and Criminal Law but a candidate who has obtained a pass in three or more subjects in any one sitting will be exempted from the subjects in any repeat sitting. As you will be aware, this radical new policy of the Law Society has been generally very well received. Whilst the current training system has served us and the public well it is time for a change: we are now part of the Single Market so that our system not only has to produce solicitors to serve the people of Ireland but also must be in a position to take advantage of the opportunities for Irish solicitors inside the European Community.

exemption from double examination and also that we were losing some of the best graduates altogether. Having been involved in the setting up of our Law School back in the late 70s and indeed having been Chairman of the Education Commit- tee on two occasions, I was well aware of their feelings in the matter. As an aside I would have to say that it is a pity that communication between the Universities and the Law Society has been so poor in the last few years. We now intend to remedy that and set up a Joint Committee with them. When we planned the new Law School and new training system, it was not proposed to ask law graduates to sit our entrance examination provided they had covered in their degree course the six " c o r e " subjects of our examination. When in 1977 the Society decided that everyone seeking entry into its new training course, starting in 1979, should sit the entrance examination, law graduates were exempted from it until 1982 on the basis that it would be unfair to impose an entrance examination on someone who had embarked or was about to embark on a law degree course on the assumption that the conferring of that degree would mean he/she would not have to sit the entrance examination. In between 1982 and 1988 accordingly, law graduates and non-law graduates alike had to sit the entrance examination. The Society has been accused of operating an informal quota but let me categorically deny that that was ever so. Certain students and s t udent representatives have con t i nuous ly repeated this allegation, presumably on the basis that if you keep repeating a slander long enough, it comes to be believed. What they have not informed the media is that in one of the High Court cases it was found as a fact that the Law Society did not operate a quota. In the only other High Court case that went to hearing the Judge stated: " I can find no evidence to suggest that the Education Committee acted in any way contrary to the principles of

When I was elected President of the Incorporated Law Society, one of my targets was to seek to persuade the Law Faculties in the various Universities to expand their Degrees to include options in Business Studies, Economics, Accountancy and Languages. The Law Society had put this proposal to the Universities some years ago but nothing had come of it. We decided that it would be more effective to commence by talking to the Presidents of the University Colleges and the Provost of Trinity College and consequently they and their Registrars were invited to Dinner w i t h some representatives of the Education Committee and the Vice Presidents and also, of course, the Director General and Professors Woulfe and Sweeney. The result was what everyone agreed was a tremendous and stimulating debate on the sub- ject of Legal Education. Following t hat mee t i ng, I received invitations from all the Colleges to visit them and during the year travelled with Mr. Ivers and Professors Woulfe and Sweeney to U.C.C., the new University of Limerick, Trinity College and U.C.D. and we intend to visit U.C.G. shortly. Again there has been an excellent exchange of views and whilst we pushed the objectives I have mentioned above, the members of the Law Faculties urged us very strongly to reconsider our policy of requiring law graduates to sit our entrance examination on the grounds that the standard of law degrees now was good enough to justify

Contd. on page 311.

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