FIRM PROFILE:BETWEEN THE collapse in conveyancing work and the disbarring of rogue solicitors who played fast and loose in the property market, the legal sector has taken a bit of a bashing during the downturn.

However John Reid, co-founder and managing partner of mid-tier legal firm O’Rourke Reid, says there were already fault lines in the profession – the recession is just laying those bare more quickly.

Reid’s firm has put a lot of effort into raising its game, but he believes it is essential that the Irish legal sector as a whole wins back the respect of the public.

Reid says it wasn’t simply the Michael Lynn and Thomas Byrne debacles that damaged solicitors’ reputation – instead there has been a gradual diminishing in the reputation of the legal profession in the eyes of the public over many years.

“There is a massive perception issue out there with the public,” he says. “People feel the system has no transparency, the fees are too high, they’re not getting an explanation for how fees are made. It’s no joy for us to be in a profession that isn’t trusted. We don’t want to be a necessary evil.”

Despite what the public might believe, solicitors are not some kind of bloodsucker, but the profession has got to become more competitive. For instance, fees in Britain are considerably lower.

“Value for money in legal services is going to be a bigger issue as time goes on,” he says.

Ireland has a contracting economy with few transactions, and every business is looking at its budget – they are no longer prepared to pay boom-era fees.

Last August, O’Rourke Reid became the first Irish firm to achieve accreditation from Lexcel, the international practice management standard of the Law Society of England and Wales.

To maintain its Lexcel quality mark, the firm must be transparent when it comes to fees. This means sending every client a quotation in writing before a transaction starts. If the transaction or deal is not cut and dried, it is obliged to let the client know that the quotation may have to change and it has to contact the client as the work progresses with any update on fees.

Acquiring the Lexcel stamp of approval was quite an undertaking for the firm, but Reid says it was worth it as it helped it to improve the service to clients and become more competitive. He believes it is only a matter of time before other firms in Ireland will have to follow suit, predicting that some kind of objective, recognisable standard like Lexcel will become part of the regulatory process here.

O’Rourke Reid was established 30 years ago on Baggot Street, and over the years has developed into a full-service medium-sized law firm, with its Dublin office now on Mount Street Crescent.

Then in 1998 the decision was made to set up an office in Leeds in the north of England. It was a bold move – at that time, very few Irish firms had taken the step across the Irish Sea.

Many of O’Rourke Reid’s Irish clients had British parent companies, or factories and other operations in Britain, so it was a logical step.

“One way to leverage off that business was to grow the practice there so we wouldn’t be overly reliant on the Republic of Ireland,” he says. “Secondly it would help us raise our game.

“The legal system over there is much more competitive. The fee structure is lower, the paperwork is much more stringent, it is really tightly run.”

Reid is perplexed as to why more Irish law firms didn’t expand into Britain and surmises that perhaps during the boom time they did not feel they needed to look outside Ireland.

In terms of O’Rourke Reid’s Dublin practice, which employs 15 lawyers, anything transaction- based is under pressure, while family law business has also declined.

“The family home was always the main asset, but because that can’t be sold there really isn’t any money,” he says. “A lot of people in family law disputes are just accepting the status quo.”

However areas such as debt recovery, advice on insolvency, and litigation have picked up.

Reid is forthcoming on all topics but one – turnover. Why the reticence (which incidentally is shared by almost all of his competitors)? The firm regularly reveals its turnover in tenders, so why is it unwilling to share that information with the public?

He says he does not want the firm to end up like US companies with a “mad focus” on quarterly figures.

Revealing income would put intense pressure on its fee earners to beat that figure and an “unhealthy focus” on turnover to the detriment of the client service. “It’s not because we’re making such astronomical profits,” he says.