Barristers: Regulation will hike costs

The cost of hiring a lawyer will rise as a result of the Government’s plan for a new regulatory authority to govern legal services, according to the professional body for barristers.

Other measures in the Legal Services Regulation Bill will also lead to higher costs, according to the Bar Council.

Publishing what it calls a regulatory impact assessment, of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority, the Bar Council said it shows the proposed bill will lead to greater costs for practising lawyers, for the State, and for the general public, by creating a regulatory body whose size and scale far exceeds the original proposed oversight regulator.

The body claims the assessment, by economists Compecon, shows the authority will cost between €5m and €7m to set up and €5.3m-€8.6m more to operate every year than the current regulatory system.

It called on the Government to review the scale of the authority.

Chairman of the Bar Council Paul O’Higgins said: “The Bar Council remains fully open to the reform of our profession to benefit consumers of legal services and practitioners alike. We have consistently warned, however, that many measures contained in the Legal Services Regulation Bill are excessive and uncosted and could lead to increased rather than decreased costs.

“These concerns are laid bare by the regulatory impact assessment that we have undertaken. It shows that the proposed Legal Services Regulatory Authority is far larger in size and scale than that proposed by the Competition Authority in its 2006 report on reducing legal costs on which much of the bill before us is based.

“Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to ordinary consumers of legal services. The entire purpose of the bill to reduce costs for the general public will have been defeated…

“We would urge the Government to engage with the legal profession to identify a suitable model which would meet the need for independent regulation while keeping costs down, and limiting the creation of further quangos.”

A spokesperson for Alan Shatter, the justice minister, said he was unable to comment in detail as he only received the report yesterday.

“However, the minister remains extremely disappointed at the Bar Council’s continued, misguided and misleading campaign against legal sector reform and, in essence, against any form of independent regulation of its own members.”

The spokesperson added that the council’s statement failed “to note the fact that the €11.5m million spent annually by the Law Society [the professional body for solicitors] on regulatory matters is already a substantial cost to every practising solicitor in the country which impacts on the legal fees paid by clients of all solicitors and barristers.”