The Gazette 1994

GAZETTE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

B O O K

R E V I E W S

larly general practitioners, regarded company law as esoteric. For some, aspects of company law were (and may still be) intellectually incomprehensible. This should not be so. The authors have produced extensive and accessible guides to the intricacies of Irish corpor- ate procedures. These books can be recommended for those seeking accurate, clear and speedy enlightenment.

that the book is a collection of legal information and practical data designed to assist businesses and their professional advisers in forming, administering and finding out about the principal forms of business enterprise in Ireland. The book is intended to be a first point of reference on the relevant formation procedures, accounting requirements, taxation systems and disclosure obligations in relation to limited companies, partnerships, branches of companies and joint ventures. In an appendix, Paul Curran sets out the standard forms used for formation of a company, registration of a limited partnership, registration of a branch of an overseas company, registration of 'a European Economic Interest Grouping and registration of a business name of an individual, partnership, Irish company or overseas company on the register of business names. • In Irish Company Secretarial Precedents, the authors provide precedents to facilitate a company secretary or professional adviser in relation to management of limited company under the Irish Companies Acts, 1963 to 1990. This book is directed mainly at the private company as distinct from the public limited company. There is an introduction to each set of precedents. Chapter headings provide details of the scope of the work. These deal with, for example, incorporation of a private limited company, alteration to memorandum and articles of associa- tion, shares and share capital, borrowing and debentures, annual report, accounts and auditors, dividends and loan interest, registered office, directors, execution of documents and the com- pany seal, statutory and other registers, company meetings, winding up and striking off.

Irish Company Secretarial Precedents

By Paul Egan, Ailbhe Gilvarry and Mark Graham, Jordan Publishing Ltd. 1993, xiv + 390pp, hardback, IR£60.00.

Irish Corporate Procedures

Dr. Eamonn G. Hall

Lawyers' Skills

By Paul Egan, Jordan Publishing Ltd., 1993, xiv + 188pp, paperback, IR£20.00 A company is an artificial entity. It is invisible and intangible and has no 1 effective mind but the mind of its owners. Yet a company can possess a form of immortality and it allows for a Justice Louis Brandeis in Liggett Company .v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517, 567 (1933) (dissenting in part) noted that through size, companies once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business can possess such a concentration of economic power that so-called private companies are sometimes able to dominate the State. Brandeis used the expression "Frankenstein monster" in the context of a company which the State had facilitated by its corporation laws. A wise commentator once noted that the biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the law of the land. This brings your reviewer to company law and the work of Paul Egan, Ailbhe Gilvarry and Mark Graham. Paul Egan, Partner in Mason, Hayes & Curran, Solicitors, Dublin, states in the preface to Irish Corporate Procedures form of perpetual succession; a company can be a powerful force.

(Ed. Philip A. Jones). Legal Practice Course Guides, Blackstone Press Limited, 1993, £14.95 stg, softback, 218pp. This academic year has seen the intro- duction of a new, practical training course for solicitors in England and Wales. Over 6,000 students com- menced their training at nineteen centres based in universities and the four Colleges of Law sites at Guildford, London, Chester and York. The course is validated and monitored by the Legal Practice Course Board of the Law Society, and is normally covered in the academic year following completion of the law degree. Highly flexible arrangements are in being allowing for qualification through an integrated law degree, part-time courses for those in law-related and other occupations, or none, and through distance learning. A condition of validation of any course - and all are different apart from their common core - is that at least 25% of the training programme is devoted to the five legal skills identified by research as those most commonly exercised by solicitors. They are legal research, drafting and writing, interviewing, negotiation and advocacy. It is at this large market, both teachers and students, that Lawyers Skills is

Some practitioners in the past, particu-

25