High Court chief: Law Society failed lawyers

A ROBUST agency to sanction and prosecute solicitors who abuse their privilege through seeking to overcharge and negligently cause loss was called for by the Master of the High Court Edmund Honohan SC, yesterday.

He said no spinning by the Law Society could disguise the systemic failure of self regulation and most solicitors must now realise they had been let down not just by a few rogue negligent solicitors but by the Law Society itself.

In a lecture delivered to law students in UCC yesterday, Mr Honohan said they should always remember the call to the Bar and for solicitors becoming an officer of the court was a privilege and not an entitlement.

“It is the status of the solicitor as an officer of the court that makes the solicitor’s undertaking of the gold standard of contractual obligations. When an officer of the court undertakes, he puts his official status on the line. A solicitor who defaults on an undertaking damages the entire profession and debases the currency,” he said.

He said it was surely also an abuse of his privilege for a lawyer to use mumbo jumbo of the “it is the law, you wouldn’t understand” variety to keep the client at bay. The Master went on to say there had been disinformation of that sort recently from the Law Society in its references to the role of the President of the High Court in the regulation of solicitors.

There was just enough legal content in these comments to make them look plausible. But the president only acts in those cases which the society brings to his attention. To suggest otherwise was a blatant attempt to deflect criticism, he said.

In cases not involving clear instances of avoidable delay or overcharging, it is understandably difficult to explain the complexities of the law which sometimes cause the problems experienced by the client, but the society does not appear to regard this aspect of the complaints procedures as important.

The Master told the students that one comment he overheard recently was that both in relation to solicitors’ conduct and the size of their bills, scrutiny by official channels was “all done by mirrors”.

The idea that a solicitor client bill could be fairly checked by the Courts Taxing Masters was not quite accurate he said as there was a specified presumption in favour of the solicitor.

The court itself might summarily dock a solicitor for negligently wasted costs in litigation but only if the negligence was “gross negligence” which was not the same as ordinary negligence.

The Master said the new system of regulation must reinforce the accountability of solicitors as officers of the Court, he said, but a robust agency would have to be put in place to sanction and prosecute when a solicitor abuses his privilege, seeks to overcharge or negligently causes loss.