SURVEY OF SOLICITORS’ FIRMS
In the first instance firms were simply asked to return a form indicating whether they would be prepared to complete a short questionnaire on the subject of conflicts of interest within the legal profession and possibly to participate in a brief follow-up interview.
Letters were addressed to the managing partner or senior partner of these firms, although the recipients were asked to indicate who, within the firm, would be completing the questionnaire. The letters were phrased in this way in the hope that managing or senior partners would forward the letter to the appropriate person within the firm.Sixty-seven firms replied to the initial letter. Fifty agreed to complete the questionnaire and 17 said that they did not wish to participate. Of those that declined to take part, 12 gave no reason, five reported that they had so many requests that they adopted a policy of blanket refusal, and two maintained that they ‘rarely had conflicts’ and, therefore, thought that there was little point in their completing the questionnaire. It is interesting to note that one of these two firms subsequently received a great deal of adverse publicity when one of its clients served a writ seeking an injunction to prevent the firm from acting in a conflict situation. The case was eventually settled out of court, but it highlighted some of the problems noted by those firms which did participate in the research.
Questionnaires
Questionnaires were sent to the 50 firms in January 1998. It was requested that all questionnaires be returned by the end of February 1998. Follow-up letters were sent to those firms which had failed to return their forms approximately one month after the closing date. In addition, where telephone numbers were available, calls were made to those firms which had still not replied.
Eventually, 30 firms completed the questionnaire.
Of these, seven firms were amongst the 10 largest in the Legal 500; four came from amongst those ranked 11 to 20; and the rest were fairly evenly spread through the remainder of the top 100.The questionnaire was completed by a variety of different people within the firms. The views of managing partners, department heads, assistant solicitors and trainee solicitors were all reflected within the sample. It is difficult to judge whether this made any difference to the findings. Sometimes a junior member of the firm, for example a trainee, was assigned the task of responding, acting under the guidance of a senior member of the firm. The response rate from the top ten firms was 70 per cent. This was probably because they appreciated the significance of the issues for their practices. Although it had not been my intention to focus to quite this extent on the very largest firms, I welcomed this pattern of response because it meant that I was talking to those firms which were likely to have had the most experience of conflicts.
The questionnaire was in four parts. Part I was designed to obtain information on how conflicts of interest affected firms at present. Part II was intended to discover whether firms were prepared to act for clients where a conflict of interest existed. Part III gave firms the opportunity to express their views on the existing rules regulating conflicts. Part IV allowed firms to raise any issue of importance to them which had not been previously addressed. Questions were drafted broadly, seldom asking for simple yes or no responses.