Latest News from the SLCC:
What is the
Aim of the SLCC?
The Commission was established by the Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2007 with a view to supposedly improve the system for the handling of complaints against Scottish lawyers.
Will the SLCC achieve this?
We don't believe so. The Commission simply pass a complaint over to the Law Society who will, without doubt, continue to protect chosen solicitors from the consequences of serious professional misconduct.
Do you have evidence to support this?
Our Law Society page contains referenced statistical, documentary and eyewitness evidence casting serious doubt on the legal profession's ability to self-regulate. Year after year, top legal brains ignore Scots Law and professional codes of conduct when investigating brother lawyers who are accused of wrongdoing. For example, 2005 saw 369 complaints to the Legal Ombudsman about the way the Law Society handled a complaint against a solicitor. The Ombudsman found that the Law Society failed to properly investigate a staggering 65% of these 369 complaints!
Did parliament's Justice 2 Committee investigate this staggering statistical evidence?
No! Despite hours of evidence from the Law Society and Ombudsman, the J2C failed to question the Law Society or Ombudsman in any detail on these powerful and damning statistics.
Were any Committee members compromised in any way?
We feel Maureen McMillan MSP and the J2C's legal advisor Margaret Ross, who is a former member of the Law Society Council, should have stepped down. Maureen's husband is also a former Law Society Council member and we wrote to Maureen stating our concerns:
"You may remember a question asked by Michael Matheson MSP relating to the profession’s 50% investigation failure rate....Your husband has played a part, albeit statistically minor, in this shameful failure rate and it is difficult to see how you can, once again, objectively scrutinise SLSO failure rates given your husband’s complicity in those statistics."
We also wrote in similar terms to Margaret Ross as she too is a former Law Society Council member:
"You have been known to champion the alleged merits of legal self-regulation...you will have been involved in many of the solicitor complaints which now form the foundation for legal consumer submissions to the Justice 2 Committee...statistics you, in your role as a council/committee member, played a central part. It follows that you have a vested interest in any advice you may provide to the Justice 2 Committee in relation to those failures."
Maureen was very open with us and even passed our concerns on to parliament's Standards Commissioner. He was unable to investigate because - incredible as this may seem - MSPs CANNOT be held to account for their conduct when serving on a parliamentary committee! Unbelievable - but true. At least Maureen had the good grace to respond to us, unlike Margaret Ross who - in typical lawyer fashion - refused to comment on our concerns!
What prompted 500 solicitors to send in written submissions?
When the Bill was introduced the Law Society spin machine went into overdrive and parliamentary submission templates were passed around the profession. Approximately half of the 500+ lawyers who wrote to the J2C in support of self regulation did not write in their own words...
You've got to be joking?
No, it's really true. Some of the lawyer clowns who used templates felt so uncomfortable about doing so they changed the odd word here and there in a sad attempt to make their work appear original.
Plagiarism: a form of cheating and is seen as academic dishonesty. It is a matter of deceit: fooling a reader into believing that certain written material is original when it is not.
Do you have any examples of this?
Yes. Margaret M Neilson is a part-time sheriff and partner in top law firm Balfour Manson. Her submission originates from the same template used by Angela Wipat, another solicitor in her firm. This very template is used by many other plagiarisers. Click Here to open parliament's website in a new window and compare Ms Neilson's submission (No.72) to that of Ms Wipat (73) and to submssions from, say, the following solicitors:
294 Catriona MacLeod
296 Lynne Leatherbarrow
297 Shaun George
298 Nicola Brown
300 Judith Meil
305 George Tait
On reading all of these submissions you will note some differences; but a closer inspection reveals certain paragraphs and sentences that are identical, word for word, comma for comma.
So who plagiarised?
The menu below is in alphabetical order - forenames first.
And who lied to parliament?
In our view, Douglas Mill unquestionably lied to parliament. He did so in relation to the Leaked Law Society Internal Memo - in response to questions by John Swinney MSP and he also lied in relation to the percentage of solicitor negligence claims which go to court.
Lie No.1
Douglas Mill swore "on his Granny's grave" that the Law Society don't, and never have, dabbled in PI claims - but the Memo exposes Mill's proposal for a "summit meeting" with the Insurance Brokers to "discuss both the complaints and claims aspects" of a Law Society complainer (Mr Stewart MacKenzie).
Douglas Mill: "I quite properly inquired of Marsh, "I seek an assurance that these claims are being progressed quickly"
John Swinney MSP: "The memo...encourages "a summit meeting...to be held to look at "both the complaints and the claims aspects." That rather suggests that the Law Society has been involved."
Mike Lloyd (SACL webmaster): "In evidence, Mr Mill told the committee that he suggested a
summit meeting with the insurers because that was in the best interests of Mr Mackenzie, but the last sentence of the internal memo clearly gives the real reason. Mr Mill wrote:
"There is no doubt that Mr MacKenzie is intelligent and well organised individual who could, unlike some of the other thorns in our flesh, come over very well at a JHAC investigation."
The chief executive of the Law Society proposed a summit meeting to pervert the outcome of a parliamentary inquiry. Mr Mill said in evidence that he proposed the summit meeting to protect Mr Mackenzie's best interests, which was a lie. The committee should investigate that."
So what this boils down to is that Mill not only proposed a summit meeting to discuss "both the complaints and the claims aspects." - shameful enough as that is - but he lied to parliament as to the reason for this summit meeting i.e. that he, Mill, wanted MacKenzie's PI claim "progressed quickly", so as to reduce the likelihood of Mackenzie giving damaging evidence to parliament, following years of legal profession abuse. For Mill to tell the Justice Committee that the summit meeting was for Mackenzie's benefit is shameful and we are somewhat surprised that the few honest lawyers left in the legal profession have not gone over the memo and Mill's evidence to parliament with a fine-toothed comb.
Lie No. 2
Douglas Mill : "I have figures from Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance, our lead insurer, that show that less than 1 per cent of claims against solicitors go to court. Claims tend to go to court only if a relatively novel point of law is being tested or there are unrealistic expectations about the quantum—the amount that the claimant is claiming. Therefore, there is no necessity for a lengthy delay."
Trevor Goddard (Royal Sun Alliance): "Less than 1 per cent of the master policy claims that we deal with go to proof."
Douglas Mill lied about this because he knew all too well that the 1% figure relates to PROOF - not "going to COURT ". He lied in order to mislead the J2C into believing that more claims are settled "out of court" than is actually the case. Click Here for the actual video evidence.
The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission begins its work in 2008.
Page References:
Douglas Mill's Evidence to Parliament Re: less than 1 percent go to court
Trevor Goddard 's Evidence to Parliament Re: less than 1 percent go to proof
Our evidence to Parliament Re: the 1 percent issue and the memo
Marsh Insurance Fraud BBC report on America's biggest fraud
