Editor's blog | Spirit of independence

City firms employ nearly half of solicitors but sole practitioners and smaller firms account for 86 per cent of the total number of firms. Sometimes they feel like worlds apart. All they appear to have in common is a professional qualification, an ambition to uphold the highest possible standards, and an equal aspiration to do the best for their clients.

There is something else they have in common though. Neither feel that they are adequately represented by their professional body or understood by their regulator. Only last year City firms were consistently rumoured to threaten a breakaway from Chancery Lane and from the SRA. It is difficult to imagine how they could single-handedly dismiss either, but as an organised group of large, influential businesses, their message of dissatisfaction is, somehow, getting through.

Sole practitioners on the other hand are a more disparate bunch scattered around the country. Last week however they showed their collective might by turning down the Law Society’s offer to join its new Small Firms Division. Chancery Lane’s invitation to the Sole Practitioners Group was not unreasonable. In an attempt to unite the profession and operate more effectively in the post-Legal Services Act era, the society is trying to weld its various constituents around a single core. Further down the line, there is also the possibility that, before long, the representative body could be just that, with revenue from practising certificate fees going straight to an independent SRA. This would leave Chancery Lane having to raise its own finance. Absorbing ‘recognised groups’ within its own newly-created divisions – and therefore not having to fund them – is one important element of its survival strategy.

But the society’s success in bringing independent groups into its fold has been mixed. The independent Trainee Solicitors Group and the Young Solicitors Group were merged into the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) in 2008. It was a land grab that caused a bit of hand-wringing. But there was little that the two groups involved, whose constituents were by definition transient, could do about it.

Solicitor-advocates on the other hand, saw things differently. When the Solicitors Association of High Court Advocates (SAHCA) were invited to join the Advocacy Division last year, they rejected the offer. Local government lawyers have refused too, with the Solicitors in Local Government group (SLG) combining forces with the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors (ACSeS) to set up Lawyers in Local Government. The Law Society’s new In-House Division was too broad a church, they said, as it will also include in-house counsels. Now SPG has also opted for independence, and as we are going to press, the Commerce & Industry Group (C&I), which represents corporate in-house lawyers, has just notified Chancery Lane that it will not join the In-House Division. Altogether, it is more than 40 per cent of its membership that Chancery Lane has failed to convince.

Life as independent organisations will not be easy. SPG, for instance, can count on a loyal membership base, but there is little doubt that the £24,000 it has been receiving every year from Chancery Lane must have helped balance the books. But the party facing the greatest challenge is the Law Society. Solicitors revolted against associate membership two years ago, now they are refusing to be strong-armed into the Chancery Lane bosom. If there ever was a relevance crisis, we’re looking at one now.