Two pieces in this month’s Legal Business touch on a common theme: the profession’s failure to influence government.
The first touches on the policy issues that have most commonly put the profession into conflict with government: the provision of legal aid, in our coverage of the unprecedented strike by publicly-funded lawyers. In the second, in our Global 100 debate, Slaughter and May’s Nigel Boardman rightly highlights the profession’s glaring lack of influence in shaping business law, while senior figures cite mounting concerns over the future of the judiciary and courts.
The UK profession’s lack of clout has long been bizarre. English law has huge influence globally both in terms of foreign businesses deploying it and choosing English lawyers and courts but also in terms of soft power. The UK is a global leader in legal services, home to the world’s second-largest legal market and a substantial contributor to exports and tax revenues.
Yet you would hardly know it for all the prominence the profession gains. That would be understandable if lawyers lacked profile but enjoyed backstage access to shape legislation, but their input beyond technicalities is next-to-nothing. My very broad gut feel is that UK lawyers have far less of a role in influencing law-making than many countries with legal sectors a fraction the size and sophistication of our own.
The result of this lack of clout has been all too apparent in the legal aid and personal injury sector, where the profession’s efforts have been divided and often just downright naïve. Some claim this is inevitable as legal aid isn’t that popular with the public thanks to the image of fat-cat lawyers. That’s ridiculous. There are plenty of industries that are unpopular, and which this nation isn’t particularly good at, that do a far better job at getting their voices heard in Whitehall.
Policy is formed in a bruising contest of interests and political realities – not some mock academic debate.
A more substantive reason for the lack of influence is the historic split between the Bar and solicitors, dividing the part of the profession that feeds the judiciary from the majority. Unsurprisingly, governments have frequently played the two sides off against each other and found the Bar cheaper to buy off (and then usually the senior end of it).
On a wider level too often the profession has been divided and defined by self-interest along its different branches rather than pulling together – as such it carries less weight and is itself diminished.
But in the final analysis much of this comes down to naivety that seems particular to the lawyerly mindset. Policy is formed in a bruising contest of interests and political realities – not some mock academic debate with a judge-like figure to be an arbiter of fairness and precedent.
Governments have priorities and a keen eye for identifying the interest groups that can be ignored and those that will organise and pursue their goals with persistence, conviction and a modicum of strategy. Power, to a considerable extent, has to be wrested not requested.
It has only been when the profession has finally shown a little more steel that a few concessions appeared on legal aid, but for the publicly-funded profession it may be too little, too late. But better late than never, I suppose, and there will be other battles. Otherwise you’ll get another Global Law Summit.
alex.novarese@legalease.co.uk
