Lawyers in the new millennium have to face an avalanche of changes of gargantuan proportions, according to the President, Mrs McAleese. She was speaking at the official opening of the new Law Society education centre in Dublin yesterday.
The legal education provided by the society had to equip young lawyers to deal with these changes in the law, Mrs McAleese said. Their colleagues in Northern Ireland had to deal with historic changes, with the coming into force of the European Convention on Human Rights yesterday.
"But a central spine runs through it all," she said. "Each one has to be an examplar and an ambassador for the profession."
Referring to the computer training provided in the Law Society's new course for apprentice solicitors, she added: "Yet for all the gadgetry they will still learn that the law is fundamentally about people. Two thousand years ago Cicero wrote that the good of the people is the chief law. They will have to consider the role lawyers can play in this."