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Ask 2: Modernise legal services

Introduction

We want a legal sector that is more competitive, more innovative in how it provides services, and more transparent for consumers. In Ireland, legal practitioners aren’t required to publish their service costs. Other countries, like the UK, do require this.

The legal sector has made some progress in bringing in new business models, like legal partnerships, but these have not spread widely yet. Other ideas like allowing different kinds of professionals to work together in legal practices and making it easier for consumers to talk directly with barristers on contentious issues haven’t moved forward either.

In Ireland, the Bar Council and the Law Society hold monopolies in training the barrister and solicitor professions. In 2020, the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) recommended setting up the Legal Practitioner Education and Training Committee to change this. This committee will create rules for training legal professionals and approve institutions that want to offer training. This is based on recommendations from the CCPC and its predecessor organisation, the Competition Authority. The Department of Justice is responsible for bringing it about.

Why it matters

It’s important for consumers to have information about prices, services, and quality in a market. This helps them to shop around and make more informed choices. It also promotes competition between providers.  

Many people agree that legal costs in Ireland are too high. This increases the cost of doing business, leads to higher prices across the economy, and makes it harder for consumers to get access to justice. This issue has consistently been raised by the CCPC, the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, and the OECD which has highlighted it for years.

Not having enough data on legal costs makes it hard for policymakers to see how prices are changing in a sector that’s important for national competitiveness. It also makes it difficult for consumers and businesses to shop around and make informed choices when buying legal services.

Direct access to barristers in contentious matters, for example involving litigation, can lower costs for consumers by letting them hire a barrister directly, without needing to go through a solicitor first. This is especially useful for consumers repeatedly dealing with the same legal issue.

Allowing different kinds of professionals (e.g. solicitors and accountants) to work together in partnerships could help clients with different connected needs by combining services like accounting and legal advice. This would give consumers and businesses more options and could save them money.

There is a clear lack of competition in legal education and training and the professions are less diverse in part due to barriers to entry.

Lengthy and expensive legal proceedings raise costs to consumers and businesses, reducing access to justice.

How we can do it

  • The Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) could oblige solicitors and barristers to be clear about the prices of the services they offer. Over time, clear pricing could lead to online tools to compare prices for common legal services.
  • The Government should introduce measures to control litigation costs, including giving careful consideration to binding guidelines on maximum legal fees.
  • Work under way to reduce inefficiencies in court procedures, including through the Judicial Planning Implementation Steering Group and the proposed Civil Reform Bill, should be accelerated.
  • The LSRA should focus its data collection and research on legal costs to help raise public awareness and track how these costs change over time.
  • The Central Statistics Office could improve its Service Producer Price Index survey to gather more detailed and reliable data specifically for legal services.
  • The Legal Practitioner Education and Training (LPET) committee should be set up as soon as possible and focus on important topics like:
    • New ways for people to become legal professionals
    • Making sure past learning gets recognised
    • Stopping unpaid work during solicitor and barrister training to open access and promote more diversity in the legal profession.
  • Direct access to barristers for contentious matters could be permitted through a system of regulation.
  • Multi-disciplinary practices (MDPs) were made possible by the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, but they have not been set up yet. The LSRA needs to recommend how to start them. Then, the Minister for Justice could make it happen under the 2015 Act or suggest new laws for different kinds of multi-disciplinary practices.

Further reading

 

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