Honorary Secretary’s Report Summer 2021

Honorary Secretary’s report for Summer 2021

Let’s hope that with a few more delays the pandemic will be over, or manageable with social distancing and possible mask wearing, but that otherwise we will be back to normal and be able to see each other, if not entirely in the flesh, then in person but behind a facemask.

Let’s hope that facemasks are not required on the 8 to 10th of October 2021 which is the date now pencilled in for the next SPG Conference and AGM which is to take place near Ascot. Hopefully this will be a central venue which will attract everyone to come to it for both the full conference experience and for day attendance.

Penny and her helpers will be providing us with a feast of education and entertainment and I hope we can all get back on track to meet each other again.

In the meantime, the SPG has soldiered on with its normal meetings at which I’m back to fulfilling my job as secretary and taking the minutes. However, can I again acknowledge the support of Anika and Sheila as the SPG administrative assistants.

This will probably be a shorter report than usual because I will leave space for the much larger Council Members report which Lubna will prepare in her capacity as Vice President of the Law Society.

I will tell you now, to save her embarrassment, that although Lubna set out her position as Deputy Vice President as recently as the SOLO winter 2021 edition, things moved quickly after that as the president David Greene stepped down because of a professional issue, and that meant that the Vice President Stephanie Boyce moved up to President and Lubna moved up to Vice President. A week in the Law Society is a long time!

Lubna has therefore had to accept that her training for President has been compressed considerably but she has risen to the challenge. As things stand Stephanie Boyce will continue as President till October 2022 when Lubna will take over as President. I am sure that will be a very proud moment for members of the Group. I know that Lubna will bring a much-needed breath of fresh air to the office of President and hopefully make it more relatable to its less involved members of the Society.

Meanwhile the Group continues to improve its status with the Law Society from being a satellite Group to a Group having influence and clout within the Society. The changes that I mentioned in my last report as to the re-election of the Group’s Council Members have come about. As things stand, in a year’s time when the database of sole practitioners can be established to the satisfaction of all parties, all sole practitioners will be balloted for the choice of their sole practitioner members for the two council seats allocated to the Group.

In the meantime, however, a peculiar hybrid has been proposed by the Law Society’s Council Membership Committee and agreed recently by Council that whilst the new Council Members should be nominated pending the provision of a database, that nomination should be notified to all members of the relevant Groups allowing all members of any relevant Group to propose themselves for nomination, the nomination be decided by the Executive Committee.

Those of you still reading this whilst awake, may wonder how if there is no database, can there be a valid notification to all members of the Group. I can’t answer that.

It will be a matter for the Executive Committee to decide on and you may receive notification of the renomination of two members of the Group as Council Members. I trust at least that Lubna will be renominated so that she can continue as Vice President and President. Incidentally there is now a 12 year rule on maximum council membership so that Lubna, in four years, having completed three four-year terms as Council Member will have to stand down.

In the Winter SOLO 2021 report I mentioned the Law Society initiative to investigate the Law Society’s historical connection with the slave trade and colonialism. I have to say that no more reports have been received by the Council Members on this initiative.

sIf cLOsURe

The issue that has really exercised myself and Lubna over the last 12 months is the question of the post-six year run-off cover closure of the Solicitors Indemnity Fund.

This is something which particularly affects sole practitioners who are not easily able to pass their post-retirement liabilities to another firm, and even if they can they have to rely on that other firm remaining in existence. In the period since I last wrote you it has been established that the Fund operated by the Solicitors Indemnity Fund Ltd under the control of the SRA holds about £33 million of investments of which approximately £10 million is reserved for potential claims. The fund has not declined significantly over the past four years.

On that basis the SRA is being lobbied by all parties connected with lawyers, to continue the Fund until a similar formula can be established to use the available funds and to continue the cover on some basis or other.

The SRA were to have made a decision on 8 June but have deferred this decision to the week of 14 June and hopefully an updated stop press note can be provided as to the up-to-date position before going to press.

I can say that the SPG have felt so strongly about this that they have expended a modest proportion of their assets in obtaining the advice of a QC as to whether a Group such as the SPG could bring a judicial review claim to prevent closure of the fund and the withdrawal of cover.

The advice is that in principle this could be done and accordingly the Group sent a letter to the SRA and the Legal Services Board referring to the possibility, if not the threat of the judicial review application if the fund was closed at the end of September. And we are just awaiting the next move of the SRA and indeed the Legal Services Board, who we believe would have to give approval for the termination of the Fund.

In this we are acting separately to, but in reasonably close cooperation with, the Law Society, and it may be that the Group can provide a vehicle for judicial review into which the Law Society would intervene on behalf of the profession generally.

One of the board minutes of the SRA describes the sort of protection that solicitors require for post-six year run-off claims as “sleep easy protection”. Given the way claims can arise from all sorts of latent risks these days I would describe it as “sleep at all protection”. An interesting statistic is that of run-off claims 90% are within the first six years and therefore 10% within the post-six year period.

Because of my position, as involved with insurance on behalf the Group, it has fallen to me to carry out the research and work on this but I am very glad to be supported wholeheartedly by the officers and the majority of the Executive Committee in doing so.

I know that Penny has done a lot of separate work as Chairman, and I thank her, as Chairman of the Group, and Jo Connolly as Vice Chairman, for their support to me as Honorary Secretary and also particular thanks to Lubna for the way in which she and I can cooperate to promote the interests of the Group as Council Members for the Group.

clive sutton honorary secretary August 2019

Stop press. Having drafted this report we have been told on the morning of Tuesday the 15th June that the SRA have agreed in principle to the fund remaining open for a further year. Given the amount of activity that has taken place leading up to this decision, this should lead to a flying start for all parties to agree to long-term solution of post-six year run-off.