You go away for a week and all hell breaks loose….
Juggling the competing interests involved in representing the legal profession is not an enviable task. Frankly it’s a thankless one, as last weeks events demonstrate. We obviously experience this divergence of views amongst our client base and the Law Society’s alternative to PCT certainly has engendered a full range of reactions. There is greater unanimity on the timing of its release and the impact it has had on momentum on the anti PCT campaign, it has to be said.
I have no inclination to wade into this debate on any particular “side”; it does however seem incontrovertible that every move towards “market consolidation” in the last 2 decades has failed. TLS proposals have many echoes of these, statistically measured quality and performance has had many variants for example – remember QPR reports? Other elements involve little more than the reciting of existing contractual provisions, presumably because the MoJ policy wonks don’t understand them yet.
Take “Ghost” Duty Solicitors, the LAB/LSC/LAA have been in a position to resolve this, one way or another, throughout all our lifetimes. Instead we have only witnessed sporadic, local, uncoordinated and inconsistent “Ghostbusting”.
With the deep cynicism, acquired assisting firms in this never-ending slalom, it does strike me that ultimately it will be the money which dictates the outcome. We have not got to that bit yet.
UPDATE
The comments on this Gazette article cover some of the differing views we have been hearing and refer to above.
