No point in having a watchdog if he isn't allowed to bark. And occasionally bite. Garry Watson, the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman, likes to get off the leash when he can, which is why he was in good form last week. He was getting his teeth into ''conservative'' elements on the Law Society Council for standing in the way of requiring solicitors to issue engagement letters to clients after the initial meeting setting out what has been agreed of a case and likely costs involved.
Seems pretty reasonable. It's what any lawyer would tell a client to get hold of when dealing with a contractor working on his house or estimating big repairs on the car. For a chartered accountant, Watson is pretty ferocious. His critics say he is completely barking but he can lick as well as growl, praising the progress made by the Law Society over the past year, without which the wrath of solicitor D Dewar, Secretary of State of this parish, might now have been descending on the profession. He's also sympathetic to the reasons lawyers seem to get it in the neck from clients more than architects, surveyors or even accountants. The public are more likely to use their services and the adversarial system means there's always a loser and presumably a disgruntled client ready to give the brief a kicking.
As for the Faculty of Advocates, the jury is still out, as we await the review of its complaints services ordered by the new Dean, Nigel Emslie QC. But if it's a dog's breakfast, prepare to see Gnasher Garry bound out from his Greenside Lane kennel.
We would all give our right arm to get something or other. John Curtis, 63, ex-pat Brit in Florida, put an ad in the St Petersburg Times which read: ''British-made kidney-shaped item: will swop for 45-foot motor/sail boat.'' Trouble was that it was for real. But it is illegal under Florida state law to sell or trade in human organs and illegal under federal law to sell them. ''We're not going to pursue it,'' Curtis said. Sensible chap.
It's good to dispel the notion that all lawyers are drab,
dull, bookworm types. Wendy Fitzwilliam, 25, from Trinidad and Tobago, is a law graduate and she's also the new Miss Universe, which carries a cash prize of $200,000. There again her contest patter probably needs to go to avizandum: ''My goal would be to impress upon women by my example that their struggle should not be for superiority over men but for equality to fulfil our God-given task of bringing up children, the future of the human race, together.'' Quite, but we doubt if Wendy is quite in the Cherie Blair mould.
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