Changing how the law works: Conventions from another time failing

Legislation intended to change how the legal professions do business was unveiled in 2011. Those proposed reforms were a key condition of Ireland’s EU-International Monetary Fund rescue package as the Troika recognised, as many Irish people do, that the status quo, if it is to serve all of society optimally, must evolve.

It is not surprising — in fact it is sadly all too predictable — that those 2011 proposals were, in the face of forceful lobbying from the legal professions, emasculated beyond effectiveness. Last week, a relatively minor high court case indicated why those modernising, shine-the-light-in changes were stonewalled so very determinedly.