The Gazette 1994

GAZETTE

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JUNE 1994

P o o r e m p l o y m e n t p r o s p e c t s f o r s o l i c i t o r s r e p o r t e d

Solicitors (Amendment) Bill, 1994

to a survey on their employment prospects last April, 25 has felt they had no prospect of a job, 22 said they had some hope, 8 felt they had a good prospects of a job, 3 had received an offer from the firm where they were apprenticed and 7 had accepted offers of jobs. A spokeswoman for the Society was quoted as saying that while law provided excellent training, school leavers should not think of a law degree solely as a means of becoming a solicitor. "The growth in the numbers of students who want to study law is far greater than the growth in demand for legal services." Following extensive press coverage in all papers at the end of April and early May of the mortgage difficulties being faced by the entertainer, Adele Agnew (Twink), the evening papers of 27 April and the national daily papers of 28 April, reported that Twink was not fully co-operating with the Compensation Fund of the Law Society concerning an outstanding mortgage debt on her former home at Anne Devlin Road, Dublin. The Evening Press of 16 May and all the national daily papers on 17 May reported that the £30,000 mortgage debt on the house had been paid off by the Law Society. The papers reported that Mrs. Agnew's counsel had told Judge Cyril Kelly that the requirements of the Law Society concerning details of the claim had been satisfied and agreement had been reached. The Irish Press and Evening Press of 17 May reported that papers detailing how a solicitor, William Keane, had forged the will of his aunt were to be sent to "the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Society" (sic). In the course of an application to condemn the will, counsel appearing for Mr. Keane informed the court that his Disciplinary/Compensation Fund

April, reported on the case of Francis Keely, a 22 year old law graduate with a 2:1 primary degree and a masters degree who had part-time work in Dunnes Stores "and little else to bolster her good humour and optimism in the relentless search for a solicitor's apprenticeship." The article said that before Ms. Keely finished her studies, she dispatched no fewer than 150 applications to solicitors' practices around the country. Since she had obtained her masters degree, she had sent off another 175. The article said that her problem was that she lacked contacts; "ideally this would be a co-operative solicitor who knew her father or mother, say, or better still, happened to be her father or mother." A full page article in The Irish Times Education and Living Supplement, published on 3 May, entitled "the Hard Side of the Law" focused on the difficulty that newly-qualified solicitors were experiencing in obtaining jobs and the initiatives the Law Society was taking to try to widen job opportunities for solicitors. The article also highlighted the delay in obtaining a place on a Professional Course in the Law School. Concluding the article, Christina Murphy commented "ironically, the crises in both training places and job opportunities for professional lawyers have come at a time when the extremely high earnings of a small proportion of the professional are being highlighted by the reports of the Beef Tribunal . . . thus making law even more attractive to school-leavers. The reality is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, with many lawyers finding it difficult to make ends meet at all." The Education and Living Supplement to The Irish Times of 24 May reported on graduate employment. The article noted that of 66 students on the Advanced Course who had responded

The Irish Times and Irish Press of 11 May, reported that Liz O'Donnell TD had put forward an amendment to the Solicitors Bill at Committee Stage seeking the introduction of a fine of £1,000 for complainants who gave false or misleading information to the disciplinary tribunal of the High Court. The Minister of State for Justice promised to consider the amendment but said that he did not want to do anything "which would discourage even one person with a genuine complaint from coming forward to the tribunal." On the same day, the Irish Independent reported that the Junior Justice Minister had rejected an amendment to the Bill which would have abolished the compulsory examination in Irish. Remarks by Dr. Patrick O 'Keeffe, Chairman of the insurance company, FBD, that the level of court awards and the activities of "ambulance chasing" solicitors were costing jobs, damaging tourism and increasing the costs of insurance, were reported in the Evening Herald of 17 May and The Irish Times and Independent of 18 May. The Independent and Cork Evening Echo of 18 May quoted a spokeswoman for the Law Society who said it was accidents that led to claims, not the activities of solicitors. The spokeswoman stated that the Law Society would defend the right of anyone who had been injured through the fault of someone else to make a valid claim for compensation. Solicitors were entitled to advertise their services and to offer advice to people who had been injured. Accident lead to claims

Employment prospects for newly- qualified solicitors

In an article focusing on unemployment, The Irish Times on 27

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