In-house lawyers reject Law Society's new division

The Commerce & Industry Group, which represents the interests of corporate in-house lawyers has rejected the Law Society’s invitation to join its new In-House division, Solicitors Journal has learned.

“At this point in our organisation’s evolution, we feel that we will better serve our members’ interests by remaining independent from the Law Society,” said C&I group chair Nina Barakzai (pictured) in a letter to the society’s head of membership services Maureen Miller on 24 January.

Barakzai’s letter, seen by Solicitors Journal, says it has always been the C&I’s intention “to work collaboratively with the Law Society”.

“We are supportive of the Law Society’s involvement with the in-house legal community and welcome its initiative to launch services and information that will be of benefit to in-house solicitors,” said the in-house counsel for IT company Cognizant.

As a sign of the C&I’s engagement with members, Barakzai invited the Law Society to consider its new website and the forthcoming new pages on corporate governance and those dedicated to in-house lawyers in charities.

The C&I group’s decision comes ten days after the Sole Practitioners Group (SPG) told Chancery Lane that it would not morph into its new Small Firms Division.

Last month the SPG’s 15-strong executive committee voted unanimously against the move. “They said we should join their new division; we said we wanted to keep our magazine, our conference and our website; they said we couldn’t, that we would just be able to advise,” said West End sole practitioner and council member Ian Lithman.

The Law Society’s decision to do away with the ‘recognised group’ status will come into effect in June this year. Interest groups, including the Association of Women Solicitors (AWS), local government lawyers, SPG and C&I, were given the option to join new divisions controlled from Chancery Lane.

All organisations that choose to remain independent will stop receiving direct funding from the Law Society.

Late last year, the Solicitors in Local Government (SLG) also opted out of joining the In-House Division. Instead, it decided to merge with the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors (ACSeS) to create a new organisation, Lawyers in Local Government, due to go live at its 1 April 2013 conference.

The society’s in-house division was “far too wide given it includes in-house lawyers across all sectors in the commercial sphere,” said incoming head of the new group Mark Hynes, director of governance and democracy at Lambeth council.