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The main purpose of this Bill is to implement most of the proposals in the Report on Legal Services that involve legislative amendments. Before describing the proposed amendments, I would like to sketch in for Members the background to this Bill.
The background
In January 1993, the Law Society published a paper on "The Future of the Legal Profession". The paper was very critical of the existing system, (I quote) -
"We believe that the rules which regulate the two branches of the profession and the relationships between them, and between them and their clients in general, increase cost, inhibit access to advice and representation and, frequently, protract proceedings. These outcomes arise, on average, without commensurate benefits in the quality of the product delivered. The current system has many in-built inefficiencies which would be avoided by alternative approaches."
The main proposal in the Law Society's paper was that there should be a unified legal profession.
A year after the Law Society's paper was published, the Bar Association published its Position Paper, which rejected the Law Society's proposals. We therefore had conflicting views from the two branches of the legal profession in respect of the unification of the legal profession. At the same time there were and remain other important issues relating to legal services that needed to be addressed issues such as cost, access and the responsiveness of the legal profession to client needs.
The Administration decided that it should take the lead in bringing together all these issues and in reflecting the views of the community on them.
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I need hardly restate the importance of the rule of law, the continuity of our legal system, and the vital role played by the legal profession. We need a strong and independent legal profession. But the legal profession exists to serve the community. If legal services do not meet the needs of the consumer, or if they are too expensive, or inefficient, the community may lose faith not only in the legal profession but in our legal system itself. That is not a development that any of us wishes to see.
As Hong Kong prepares to enter the twenty-first century, we must be sure that the legal services available are the best that can be provided in this dynamic, international city. We must not be complacent about the present quality and standard of professional services. There are many aspects of professional practice that are obsolete or obsolescent and have been abandoned elsewhere; many restrictions on the ways in which legal services may be offered; and many practices that are anti- competitive and are not in the public interest.