On the 19th November, The Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) published two separate reports with recommendations to the Minister for Justice.
The first report is entitled, “Setting Standards: Legal Practitioner Education and Training“. The report is focused on examining the competence and standards required to practise as either a Solicitor or a Barrister in Ireland. The report contains two central recommendations:
1. A clear definition of the competence and standards required to practise as a solicitor or barrister should be developed;
2. The introduction of a statutory framework to establish a new and independent Legal Practitioner Education and Training Committee, which would be statutorily required and empowered to set the competency framework for legal practitioner education and training; develop a common set of competencies and standards for admission to professional legal training, and ensure that existing providers of legal education and training adhere to the standards required by the competency framework on an ongoing basis.
The second report is entitled, “Greater than the Sum of Its Parts? Consideration of Unification of the Solicitors’ Profession and Barristers’ Profession“. The report examines the case for the unification of the profession in Ireland, putting the question out for comment to the public. However, the Authority has concluded that at this stage in its regulatory timeline it would be premature to recommend that the two branches of the profession be unified. The Authority undertakes in the report to return to the matter within five years when it anticipates that the landscape for legal services providers will have evolved sufficiently for it to reconsider the question of unification as posed in the Act. This is due to upcoming changes including the introduction of relaxed rules around legal partnerships between barristers and other barristers or solicitors, as well as further consideration around multi-disciplinary practices.
These reports fulfil the LSRA’s statutory mandate to ensure the maintenance and improvement of standards in the provision of legal services by legal practitioners. Both reports have been submitted to the Minister, as required under section 34 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015.
The LSRA’s press release on the two reports is available here. (PDF)