The Minister for Justice has announced a new body to regulate legal costs and an end to the distinction between senior and junior counsel. Mr McDowell said he would establish a legal services ombudsman and introduce a range of measures to make legal fees more transparent.
He said the involvement of government in admitting barristers to the "inner bar" was an anachronism, and if the two ranks were to remain, it should only be advisory as to competence and experience, and not a matter of public law with a bearing on fees.
Speaking at a meeting in Trinity College, Mr McDowell addressed some of the issues raised by the Competition Authority report on the legal professions and announced that he had accepted the recommendations of the legal costs working group, which he set up under the chairmanship of Paul Haran in 2004.
The report of the committee is published today.
The proposal to set up a legal costs regulatory body which would draw up guidelines on charges, along with a legal costs assessment office which would assess disputed costs, is a central recommendation in this report. These two bodies would replace the existing High Court taxing masters.
The basis for the guidelines and the assessment would be "work done" by barristers and solicitors, which would have to be itemised, rather than work contracted, whether the case went to court or not, Mr McDowell said.
While the law permitted the taxing masters to "examine the nature and extent of any work done", this had not worked in practice, according to the Minister, who said he wanted a clean break with the old system.
He said he was setting up an implementation advisory group, under the chairmanship of accountant and businessman Desmond Miller, to oversee the steps necessary to bring in the new system. This would also decide on the future of the taxing masters, whose functions will be abolished.
Mr McDowell defended the existence of two branches of the legal profession, saying fused firms of solicitors and barristers would increase the monopoly power of those firms which could "fence in" the best counsel.
The present system allowed small local solicitors to employ the best barristers on behalf of their clients. The Competition Authority recommended the setting up of a legal services commission to oversee the whole profession.
Mr McDowell has not embraced this recommendation, but the proposed legal services ombudsman will meet some of its objectives, by overseeing the handling of complaints by the Law Society and Bar Council, by hearing appeals from their disciplinary committees and by monitoring entry to the professions.
The recommendations of the Haran group were broadly welcomed by Ken Murphy, director general of the Law Society, and by Hugh Mohan SC, chairman of the Bar Council, who were also at the meeting in Trinity College.