1. Legal knowledge and training

It takes a long time to study and train to be a solicitor – I know, I’ve done it. There are three stages:

• The academic stage, which is either a law degree or if you have a degree in something else, a conversation course which covers the main legal topics.
• The professional training stage, which is normally a one year course studying the legal practice course, although you can do it part time, and
• The practical stage where you work as a trainee solicitor at a law firm for two years.

I discussed training to be a solicitor in my blog post >>here.

Once qualified, all solicitors have to do 16 hours continuing professional development per year, and will not be given their practice certificate unless they have done this.

2. Insurance

All solicitors firms must obtain professional indemnity insurance and are not allowed to continue in practice without it.

In addition all solicitors pay into a compensation fund to cover those few situations, which are not covered by the professional indemnity insurance.

3. Solicitors code of conduct

All solicitors have to work to a code of conduct which you will find on the Solicitors Regulation Authority website.

4. Legal complaints service

There is a special organisation set up to deal with complaints against solicitors. It is called the Legal Complaints service. Visit the Legal Complaints Services web-site for more information.

You can find out more about solicitors regulation generally from the web-site of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which has helpful information about using solicitors.

5. Legal analysis and experience

As well as the important regulatory stuff discussed above, there is another reason why a solicitor is a good choice if you have a legal problem.

As you study law, during the long procedure leading to qualification and afterwards, your brain changes and you learn to think in a different way.

I started my legal training a bit later than most and I noticed this happening. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s rather like having a radar in your head which can spot legal problems and analyse them. (I imagine the same thing happens with doctors and diagnosis).

This is the real reason why a solicitor is a good choice, and is also why they are entitled to charge what to some people may seem to be over high fees. Anyone can look something up in a book. But it takes long training and experience to understand how the rules all fit together and can be applied to any one situation. And also to anticipate the pitfalls which may trap the unwary.

A non regulated adviser or organisation, may be able to provide a perfectly adequate service for standard situations.  However not all situations are standard.  And (worryingly) this may not be immediately apparent at first glance.

Where these unregulated services often fall down is that they fail to spot those warning signs which make your situation different, and which mean that your case needs to be dealt with in a different way.

Other legal service providers

• Legal Executives also have a long and rigorous training, are regulated, and are often just as good as a solicitor.  Sometimes they are better.  Most of the comments above about solicitors, apply to Legal Execs too.

• Likewise licensed conveyances can be an excellent choice for conveyancing work.

• Barristers have an equally rigorous training and experience to solicitors, but do not generally work directly with the public.

However non regulated advisors (including some advisors with large national charities) and unregulated quasi legal service providers may have had limited training and experience, and their advice should be treated with caution.

Legal Aid
Long term readers of this blog will know that I have written extensively in the past on legal aid, and have expressed concern, along with other law professionals, at what appears to be the gradual destruction of our once proud legal aid system.  This was set up by a Labour government in 1949, and was at that time considered to be an essential service along with the national health service.

In the past
When I first started to practice law in the 1980′s, virtually all law firms offered a legal aid service, along with their work for fee paying clients.  Someone on a low income could get legal help and assistance from almost any firm they wanted.  However in the past 15 years or so, this has all changed.  Now hardly any firms do legal aid, and it is extremely difficult for people to get help for housing, welfare, and similar legal problems.

Giving with one hand …
It ironic that the government which gave us the Human Rights Act 1998 has taken away the ability for many people to use it.  We live in a complex society and our laws are therefore complex also, as a reflection of this.  Inevitably it will be difficult for ordinary people to enforce the legal rights which are available to them, without professional legal help.

Yet this government seems intent on dismantling the legal aid system, and is making it more difficult for people in need to get proper help.

The recent PRS announcements
A prime example of this is the recent announcement by Mr John Healey, the minister for housing.  He accepts that tenants need help, but what is he offering them?  A tripadvisor type web-site and a telephone helpline.  However what tenants in difficulty *need*, is to see a qualified and experienced lawyer face to face.  Yet this is something the government appears reluctant to countenance.

What tenants actually need
Face to face advice, in particular for people who are disadvantaged (which will include vast numbers of tenants), is really essential.  As I discussed in 2006, telephone advice can be worse than useless.

To advise properly you need to see the paperwork.  An experienced housing solicitor can often get a complete understanding of a situation from just a brief glance through the papers.  He will then be able to advise on the correct course of action with confidence.  However a tenant at the end of a telephone line will not know the significance of the paperwork they hold.  They may, for example refer to a courts summons as an injunction, and fail to mention altogether documents which are crucial in the understanding of their case.

What happened to joined up thinking?
Proper professional advice can not only help the client, it can also in the long term reduce public expenditure.  For example there was a report recently in Shelter’s magazine Roof, about a recent case where a young man, who had got into a bit of a muddle with his rent.  Through the help of an experienced solicitor from the South West London Law Centre, he was able to bring a claim under the Human Rights Act against the Local Authority who were seeking to evict him.  He is now assured of accommodation.  Making him homeless would have done no-one any good, and if he had ended up sleeping on the streets, he could have developed medical problems which would then have been a cost to the National Health Service.

Save our Law Centres
The South West London Law centre is fortunate in that it receives support from City law firms (not normally short of a bob or two).  However even so it is finding it extremely difficult to survive.  Many law centres have closed over the past few years and others have major funding problems.  Yet law centers such as this are crucial for helping the under privileged.

If Mr Healey really wants to support and help tenants, providing more funding for law centres might be a better way of doing it. Rather than funding a ‘tripadvisor’ type web-site which is not going to do much to help needy tenants (many of whom won’t even have access to a computer), and will only serve to antagonise the landlord community who, understandably, consider it to be invitation to malicious tenants with a grudge to ‘bad mouth’ them.

Law Reform
Then there is the question of law reform generally.  The Law Commission was set up specifically to review the law, and make recommendations for reform.  From about 2003 it conducted a major review of  housing law and carried out a consultation exercise where literally hundreds of landlords, tenants, and advisors were spoken to and/or submitted responses. This culminated in 2006 with a final report, the Renting Homes Report, and an accompanying draft bill.  Shamefully, this major and well thought out report has been completely ignored.

What is the point of having a respected organisation such as the Law Commission, with expert lawyers such as Professor Martin Partington (who headed up much of the housing project), conduct an expensive and detailed review, if you are going to completely ignore it?

The governments main reaction was to commission yet another report (no doubt hoping that this would bring forth the ‘right answers’) from Dr Julie Rugg.  However the actions which are now proposed (including the proposed ill thought out reforms to the planning system) follow neither the (generally excellent) advice of Dr Rugg nor that of the Law Commission (although there are  elements of both).

The Law Society’s Manifesto
The Law Society, as the representative body for solicitors, who form the largest part of this country’s legal profession, has recently issued a ‘manifesto‘ setting out its position and its concerns. It looks at four main areas:

• The rule of law and access to justice
• The defence of the rights of the people
• Good governance and better law-making
• A strong and independent legal services sector

The document makes some very important points, and I hope that both those in power at present, and those hoping to be in power, will read it and take note.  You can download the pdf here.

The tenancy deposit disaster
One of the points the Law Society make is about ill drafted legislation and unintended consequences. We have seen this with the tenancy deposit legislation, added as a late amendment to the Housing Act 2004.

Although generally based on a good idea, the drafting of the clauses have proved so problematic that we are at the time of writing left with a situation where a tenant’s right to recover the penalty award of three time the deposit money (supposed to be there as a deterrent to landlords) is now dependent on the rules of the tenancy deposit scheme concerned.  Surely it should be the terms of the Housing Act which decide this, not a third parties terms and conditions?

Is this what we want?
One of the problems we have, and in particular with legal aid, is the general negative attitude people have towards the legal profession.  Generally people’s response when learning about cuts in the legal aid scheme is something along the lines of “good, that will stop all those greedy lawyers making fat profits from our money”.

Leaving aside the fact that legal aid lawyers are finding it difficult to make any sort of profit at all, let alone a fat one, the fact is that in the long run it it is not going to be the lawyers who will suffer.  They are all pretty clever people with a good qualification, they will find something else to do (and will probably be a lot better off financially as a result).  The people who will suffer will be the clients, desperately in need of good legal help, but with no-one available to provide it.

Is that the sort of society we want to live in?

This is enshrined in the practice direction for CPR 22 (which is about statements of truth)  section 3.11 which says under ‘Managing Agent’:

An agent who manages property or investments for the party cannot sign a statement of truth. It must be signed by the party or by the legal representative of the party.

But can an agent ever sign the paperwork?  My original understanding used to be, no, there are no circumstances under which an agent can sign, even if he has power of attorney.    Although I did not have any specific authority for this and the point bothered me.

I then had a discussion with a District Judge who rather specialises in possession claims.  I asked  him about this point, and he told me that persons with power of attorney *could* issue proceedings on behalf of the person they hold power or attorney for.  “Otherwise” he said, “How could all those foreign landlords who live overseas, ever claim possession?”

The obvious answer is that they should use a solicitor.  However I took the point, and changed my standard advice to indicate that it may be possible for someone holding power of attorney to issue proceedings.

Not having any reason to do so, I did not revisit this point until, on looking through the Housing Law Handbook in preparation for my review, I read at 6.20 (p308) that “It is clear that an agent cannot bring proceedings for a principal, even where there is a power of attorney”.

The author refers to the case of Gregory v. Turner 2003 and the Legal Services Act 2007 Part III.  The case gives a fairly detailed analysis (para 65 onwards).

It does seem therefore that those with power of attorney, do not have an automatic right to issue proceedings by virtue of their power of attorney (which I suspect will surprise many non lawyers).  However it does look as if they can bring a case with leave of the court.  Maybe this is what my friend the DJ was referring to.

Do you know of any cases where the Judge allowed proceedings to continue where the statement of truth had been signed by the claimants agent under a power of attorney?  Is it necessary to specifically apply for leave first? What are the criteria under which a Court will grant such an application?

However I am not sure I entirely agree with that. I don’t know about medicine but so far as becoming a solicitor is concerned (I am not going to talk about barristers), it is not necessary to travel in a line from Eton to Oxbridge to Linklaters. There are alternative routes.

The traditional route
The process of becoming a solicitor is described on the Solicitors Regulation Authority web-site here. There are three stages:

• The Academic stage (normally a law degree, but there is a conversion course for non law graduates)
• The Legal Practice course. This is offered by the College of Law and various Universities (generally former polytechnics) and colleges, and
• A training contract (previously called ‘articles’), normally with a firm of solicitors.

1. So far as stage 1 is concerned, if you cannot afford to go to University, you can study for the London External Law Degree. I studied for this many years ago (as I could not afford to pay for the conversion course from my Geography degree) – it took me five years. It was a tough five years but also enjoyable in many ways. You can only really do an external degree in this way if you actually like the subject (which I did).

For the first part of this time I worked as a legal secretary, for the final two years I worked as what we now call a paralegal but which then was called a solicitors clerk (i.e. someone without a legal qualification doing fee earning work in a solicitors office). Although I disliked the secretarial experience, it has actually proved invaluable for me, so my chequered route to becoming a solicitor was after all a Good Thing.

2. As regards the legal practice course, you can also now do this part time. Many of the colleges offer this, allowing you to study in the evenings or at weekends. If you have worked or are working in a solicitors office doing legal work (as I did) you should find this course fairly straightforward, as much of it will be familiar to you from your job.

3. The training contract is often the most difficult part of the journey, as you have to persuade a firm to take you on. However you should manage this (eventually) if you can show that you are able, and willing to work hard. You can also get a training contract with legal departments in local authorities and some other large firms such as the utilities. It has to be said though that some people find it very hard indeed to get a training contract. Which is very unfair. Although if you hang on in there and keep trying there is always hope. The solicitor who started the Nearly Legal web-site was in this position when he started blogging (hence the name), and he is now a qualified solicitor in a good London firm.

The Ilex route
There is however another route to becoming a solicitor, which is not always realised. This is via The Institute of Legal Executives, also known as Ilex. Here people, usually (although not necessarily) support staff at legal firms, study part time for their Ilex exams, which will eventually qualify them as a Legal Executive Lawyer. This is excellent for those who cannot afford to take time off or pay the fees to study full time.

Legal Executive lawyers have many of the rights formerly reserved for solicitors, for example legal executive advocates have right of audience in the County Court and Magistrates Courts, and although most work within solicitors firms, they can practice on a self employed basis.

A couple of years after qualifying as an Ilex Fellow, they can then go on to become a solicitor, generally without having to do a training contract, although I believe they still have to do the legal practice course. The Ilex site is rather vague about this and implies that the rights now available to Ilex Fellows now make this unnecessary.

One of my best friends started out as a legal secretary, qualified with Ilex, become a solicitor, and then went on to become a partner in her firm, so anything is possible if you want it badly and are prepared to work hard.

Don’t give up before you start
If you are not from a moneyed family with contacts in the legal profession, it will be harder for you to qualify. Life is not fair. However if you are of reasonable intelligence and willing to work hard, you should manage it. I did.

The main barrier I would say is one of intelligence rather than money. When I started my external law degree, there were many people in the class who never made it to the second stage because they simply could not pass the exams.

You have to be able to analyse in a legal way. That is one of the main skills that you learn through the legal education process, it reprograms your brain to think differently. If you can do this, it will help you get on in life generally, even if you never make it to becoming a qualified lawyer.

But before you start
I would suggest that all thinking of a career in the law, should first read Professor Richard Susskinds book, The End of Lawyers? which I discussed in my blog item here. This will prepare you for the future in the legal profession, which long term is unlikely to be much like the past, for most of us.

Lawyers and clients (from any country – it is an international site) can both register on the site free of charge. Both appear as anonymous, although lawyers are rated on the basis of client feedback. Clients can load up details of their case and then lawyers and client can discuss the case before the client chooses a firm to act. At that stage the lawyer pays a modest fee to the site (£50 or £150 for PI cases).

As it is free of charge, all lawyers should register. There is nothing to lose and they may gain some lucrative work.