XN000022-1996-06-11 — Page 3

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The Administration would be abdicating the responsibility it has assumed of ensuring that consumers are properly protected if it accepted the Law Society's proposal, he explained.

Apart from the abolition of scale fees, the Bill proposes that:

solicitors should be permitted to incorporate their practices, subject to proper safeguards;

the Law Society should be prohibited from creating non-statutory mandatory fee scales, and the existing non-statutory scale in respect of probate work should be abolished;

solicitors should be required to pay interest to clients, where it is reasonable to do so, in respect of clients' money held by them;

the Law Society should be given the power to make rules allowing solicitors to practise in multi-disciplinary practices;

contractual provisions under the Consent and Non-consent Schemes requiring a buyer to pay the seller's legal costs should be made legally invalid; and

the status of Queen's Counsel should, under the name of Senior Counsel, be retained.

Since solicitors are to be permitted to incorporate, it is considered that foreign lawyers should also be permitted to incorporate, and the Bill so provides. Similarly, as the Bill provides for rules to be made permitting solicitors to enter into multi- disciplinary practices, it also provides for rules to be made regulating notaries public who practise in multi-disciplinary practices.

The Bill also proposes to broaden the composition of the Costs Committee, which is empowered to make rules, with the prior approval of the Chief Justice, to provide for the remuneration of solicitors in respect of non-contentious business. The proposal is for amending the constitution of the Committee so that, in addition to the current membership, it will include four to six other persons.