Byword for bias

Lorna Jack (Legal affairs, 12 December) says her “definition of a profession is one that self-regulates in the interest of the client group it serves”, thereby depicting the Law Society of Scotland as an impartial organisation when faced with complaints of misconduct by solicitors.

That is not the “definition” that most most complainants would recognise. For them, the Law Society is a byword for bias when it “investigates” complaints.

That bias is perceived in the screeds of sophistry that are carefully assembled when the Law Society “investigates” complaints.

The prolonged correspondence between the society and the “client group” ultimately shows that sophistry is the society’s favourite (but not the only) technique when it sets out to fulfil its destiny: the exoneration of the solicitors, whose conduct in any other profession (with a nodding acquaintance with the concept of integrity) would lead to expulsion from the profession.

Self-regulation as practised by the Law Society (and the Faculty of Advocates) mimics the sectarian divide that blights Scotland: beneath the surface of a “profession that self-regulates in the interest of the client group” lurks the evolved essence of self-regulation: ultimately, it’s us (the lawyers and their regulators) against them (the clients and complainants).

No objective analysis of the nature of self-regulation could conclude otherwise.

Thomas Crooks

Dundas Street

Edinburgh