I am cancelled
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The message, when it came this morning, was stark, bureaucratic and more than a little bizarre:
Readers will know that I have been expecting this for some time. I explained in March why I thought it wrong that the regulator was now requiring me to pay an annual fee of £20 when I would receive no benefit whatsoever. That argument was subsequently “rebutted” by the the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
I did indeed receive a final warning on 12 June. But I was not being struck off, the regulator said a few days later. I was not a solicitor losing a professional qualification; I was merely a customer being removed from a database after an “overwhelmingly positive” process. So that’s all right, then.
Why, though, do I find today’s email message bizarre?
First, it tells me, I can “no longer work as a solicitor”. But, as the regulator knows perfectly well, I have never been allowed to work as a solicitor. That is because I have never applied for a practising certificate. And that, in turn, is because I went into journalism after completing my two-year training period.
Secondly, it says I shall have to pay the arbitrary and previously unannounced sum of £34 if I wait six months before asking to be restored to the roll. It’s perfectly true that the longer I wait the more opportunity I shall have to do something disreputable. But my “background” is unlikely to change next January.
And what does the regulator know about my background anyway? The last time I was asked to account for myself by the then regulator was in 1970.
Of course, this isn’t about me. This is about the thousands of respected professionals who have retired with dignity after a lifetime of service to their clients and cannot justify spending £20 a year for the privilege of calling themselves non-practising solicitors.
They have lost nothing by having to add the word “former” to their status. But profession has lost a great deal more by telling them — without a word of thanks — that their hard-won qualifications are now worth nothing at all.
I am cancelled
I was a practising solicitor for 32 years and I was not prepared to pay a £20 fee so that I could remain on the Roll and describe myself in retirement as a non-practising solicitor. If anyone asks, I confirm that I'm a retired construction lawyer and that I used to be a solicitor-advocate. Presumably my right to call myself an advocate has also ended. In the meantime, keep up the good work Joshua!
I don't think the comment by John Boyd is accurate: a barrister who has no practising certificate should describe themselves as 'non-practising'. Of course the BSB requires no fee from such persons, not least because they simply do not know the contact details of the many overseas students who have been called to the Bar; and a good many of those who remain in this jurisdiction have similarly dropped out of sight unless they have recently had a practising certificate.
On the macro point I wholly agree with all other comments.