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August 02, 2006
England and Wales Mull Competency Checks For Lawyers.
According to the Law Gazette, the London-based legal weekly, The Law Society of England and Wales is considering performing preventive competency checks on solicitors. Antony Townsend, the Law Society's first chief executive for regulation, noted that
the traditional assumption that once a member was admitted to a profession, that person would remain competent, and that the regulator’s role was to weed out ‘rogues and villains’ was changing. ‘Increasingly, the focus of consumer concern has been about continuing competence, not just character.’
The idea for the checks on UK lawyers derives from a similar UK program for monitoring physicians. The lawyer program would "spot emerging problems" and "remedy poor practice early", without the need for after-the-fact sanctions and discipline.
The Law Society is the regulatory and representative body for 116,000 solicitors in England and Wales.
Posted by JD Hull at August 2, 2006 09:50 PM
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