XN000022-1996-06-11 — Page 2

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Legal services reforms to be submitted to LegCo

A Bill to give effect to proposals for improvements to legal services, including the abolition of scale fees for conveyancing work, will be published this week.

A spokesman for the Legal Department said today (Tuesday) that the Attorney General, Mr Jeremy Mathews, had promised to introduce this legislation within the current legislative session when he announced the results of the consultation exercise on legal services in February.

The Legal Services Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 1996 will be gazetted this Friday (June 14) and introduced into the Legislative Council on June 26.

In his earlier announcement, the Attorney General had said legislation would be prepared to abolish scale fees in respect of conveyancing work. He also said if, before the legislation was introduced into the Legislative Council, the Law Society made alternative proposals that were fair to consumers and were not anti-competitive, the Administration would give them careful consideration.

From the Law Society's response to the Consultation Paper on Legal Services published last year, and subsequent correspondence with the Attorney General, the Administration had expected that the proposals that the Law Society would eventually put forward would:

contain specific proposals in respect of the fees for various types of transaction e.g. project conveyancing, and conveyances where a solicitor acts in the purchase and mortgage of the property; and

be supported by detailed empirical data, including the report prepared by its accounting consultants.

The spokesman noted that on May 17, the Law Society submitted its proposals to the Administration in the form of a position paper, suggesting that the appropriate way in which to address the problem would be for the Costs Committee to be reconvened to determine the acceptable level and structure of the fee system, without producing any specific proposals supported by empirical data.

"The Administration has been given nothing to evaluate," the spokesman said.

"Except a proposal that the Costs Committee, a body that would not meet in public and half of whose members are from the Law Society, should decide the level and structure of the fee system."