Law Soc president’s speech addresses profession’s future

In a recent speech, Law Society President John Wotton addressed key issues regarding the present and future of the legal profession, claiming that the professional distinction between barristers and solicitors may become a thing of the past. As reported in Legal Futures, Wotton also expressed hope that the regulatory structure established under the Legal Services Act is gaining independence from a "micro-managing" Legal Services Board (LSB). Offering his opinion on the potential effects alternative business structure (ABS) licences will have on legal marketplaces, Wotton predicted that smaller, traditional firms would still be able to remain competitive.

Speaking about the increasingly overlapping roles of solicitors and barristers in corporate sectors, Wotton predicted: "This development will lead inevitably to the need to revisit the question whether these two professions should continue to be separately trained, represented and regulated, as they have been for the past 180 years. I envisage the time coming when the barrister/solicitor distinction will be more a decorative than a functional aspect of our legal constitution."

Wotton was also clear in his encouragement to legal services providers continuing to operate without moving for ABS status. He firmly believes that ABS licences are not the world-changing ticket to market domination that some may have feared: "ABSs have no magic bullet in competitive terms. I have no doubt that well-managed firms will continue to thrive in the more competitive legal markets of the future, and it will be no mean feat for new ABS entrants to displace them."