It has not been a good year for the public image of the Bar Council. But much of this is based on a misunderstanding of its role, its chairman told Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent
This year tribunals of inquiry have cost the tax-payer about €60 million, most of it in legal fees. It is hardly surprising that, as a result, the term "fat cat" has come to attach itself to "lawyers" like another qualification. Those most likely to be so described are those whose work is in the public eye - the professional advocates of the Bar.
The current chairman of the Bar Council, the body which represents them, is Mr Conor Maguire, himself a veteran of the Beef tribunal, who now has a general practice. He is philosophical about the criticisms attached to lawyer's fees.
"Lawyers are at the end of the line when it comes to criticism of Government policy. It is of very little benefit to politicians to defend lawyers.
"We didn't call for any of the tribunals, and no-one expected them to last as long as they have. The fees have nothing to do with the Bar Council, they are negotiated between the individual barristers and the Departments concerned. They have wanted barristers to do the investigative work as well as the court work. It is not necessary that it should all be done by barristers, even if it had been done well."
Fees are not negotiated centrally by the Bar Council, which is not a trade union, he pointed out. "The Bar is made up of self-employed single-handed practitioners. We don't have collective bargaining on rates. At one stage it was suggested that we'd have scales of fees, but we had to get rid of it because of the allegation of price-fixing."
The fees are not as staggeringly high as people think, he insisted. "If you are engaged in a tribunal you still have all your overheads, running an office and a secretary, VAT at 21 per cent, it is nothing like the millionaires' row people suggest."
There is also a down side to tribunals from the point of view of barristers, according to Mr Maguire. "If an individual barrister is engaged in a tribunal, he surrenders his practice to his competitors. You are taken out of the market place. As soon as the tribunal stops you have to re-establish yourself again."
The cost of tribunals is not the only area where barristers have been criticised. Earlier this year the chairwoman of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, now the chairwoman of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, Ms Dorothea Dowling, accused the Bar Council of moving heaven and earth to ensure that the earnings of the bar from personal injuries litigation were not reduced.
"She comes at the whole PIAB issue from a particular interest point of view" responded Mr Maguire. "She was determined to get it up and running whatever the obstacles. But her analysis of the problem was very simplistic."
"There is no doubt that the costs of the delivery of personal injury compensation includes the bar, but the insurance companies' profits have been hit by the collapse of the equity markets. They're in business to maximise their profits and they have to turn to their premium income. It's tougher now for insurance companies."
Ms Dowling asked the legal profession to engage with PIAB and bring their knowledge of fair procedures to bear on it. How will the Bar Council respond? "We were deliberately excluded for discussing the PIAB at the beginning. We did hold a conference on the subject, and Frank Cuneen [chairman of an advisory committee on PIAB] spoke. But we always felt that a proper analysis was not done before setting it up. We felt this was not the way to go. We have offered them Bacon [Dr Peter Bacon was commissioned to write a report on personal inquiries compensation for the Bar Council]. Remarks were made at an earlier meeting about it, 'PIAB is coming and it's going to be a lawyer-free zone.' That's not conducive to positive discussions."
The Bar is also under scrutiny from the Competition Authority, to see if it conducts anti-competitive practices. The Bar is fully co-operating with this, according to Mr Maguire.
"We were given a large questionnaire, to which we responded, and then they asked us supplementaries, which we also answered." One of the issues raised regularly by those arguing for more competition is the absence of multi-disciplinary practices here, which could reduce the need for dealing separately with solicitors and barristers. In some common law jurisdictions such practices include accountants. What is the attitude of the Bar Council to this?
"Pre-Enron there was a much more belligerent attitude to professional independence," replied Mr Maguire. "But if you think through it you see the need for the kind of independent professional advice Enron should have got. Some of the larger firms in England have tended towards the one-stop-shop. They were offering what they called 'synergies', where lawyers would have to use the same stationery suppliers, travel agents etc. But then you become the slave to the person engaging you. If you lose that independence you can't offer a proper, impartial service."
The Bar Council is the self-regulating body for the profession, and barristers accused of malpractice face its disciplinary proceedings. But these are not open to public scrutiny, so how does the public know there is any real answerability?
"We have our own independent complaints procedure, and the professional practice committee hears complaints from one barrister about another. If a complaint comes from the public there is an independent complaints body and an appeals board with non-lawyer members, like representatives from IBEC and the ICTU. It is taken very seriously.
"In a free society is is essential that we should have a free solicitors' and barristers' profession, so there must be self-regulation. If you look at any society where freedoms are taken away, one of the first things to go is the independence of the legal profession. I would hate to see the Government interfere in any way with how we are regulated." Given its centrality to the justice system, what contribution does the Bar Council see itself making to law reform? Mr Maguire referred to the proposals in the Bacon report for reform of the way in which the courts deal with personal injury litigation.
But this could be described as proposals emanating from self-interest, rather than the pursuit of the general good. What about issues of no immediate material benefit to lawyers? "We made a submission to the Oireachtas committee discussing the Human Rights Bill. On issues like the in camera rule the Bar does also have a role to play.
"But you may get a range of individual opinions on issues. Our role is to promote debate. We're not a trade union, with one view. The method we've used recently has been holding conferences so that all views are represented in order to inform the debate.
"I wouldn't like us to become political in the sense that the Bar Council supports this or supports that. But we will offer the expertise we have for debate."