Law Society of NSW … Election watch … Vote for a revamped council … Proxies and pressure … Lack of transparency on expenditures … Consultant babble … Other reforms are more pressing … Theodora reports 

It’s only six big sleeps away from the annual general meeting on October 27, where the proposal to restructure the council of the society is the sulphurous issue on the agenda. 

As I had the melancholy duty to explain last week, the idea dreamt up by the inner sanctum and sprinkled with holy water by consultants, is to reduce the size of the council from 21 to 15 members, cap their tenure, while allowing the president to service up to three years (on full pay). 

Cynics have remarked that the restructuring gives the ordinary member of the society even less say in its affairs. It’s the defenestration of pesky types from the boondocks. 

The costly consultants study from Cameron Ralph Khoury has not been made available to members, but judging by the council’s report it is full of the usual vacuous verbiage … stakeholder engagement … project framework and timeline … best practice … modern governance … the key strategic priority. 

Solicitors proposing to stand for election to the council will also be required to submit a “skills-focussed CV”, creating inspired debate about the difference between a skills-focussed CV and a CV. 

Even though the Law Society is basically a society of members, Cameron Ralph Khoury is a spin off by several old hands at the corporate regulator ASIC – including Alan Cameron, former chairman of ASIC; and Lynn Ralph deputy chairman of the commission and a director of Chuckles Henderson’s Sydney Institute. Phil Khoury is a former executive general manager of ASIC. 

The firm also consulted for the Law Institute of Victoria, which didn’t have a regulatory function and has seen an overall reduction in membership of around 40 percent. 

Word from the Law Society’s Temple of Justice in Phillip Street is that president Joanne Van Der Platt is canvassing for proxies in favour of the motion. Regional presidents have been approached and asked to get their local members to support the senior prefects’ scheme. 

We’re hearing that proxies are already been counted to see if the executive has enough heft to get the rejigged governance scheme over the line. 

One insider points to the fact that the workload of members of the council is already demanding enough, and with six fewer of them it will only be worse. And here we have a scheme pushed by the president and immediate past president who won’t be around to carry the load. 

Old hands with knowledge of the voting patterns of society members say that solicitors at the large firms are usually the least interested in voting at AGMs. Their nominees usually did not find favour with the rank and file and of the last 50 presidents of the Law Society only 10 have come from big law shops. 

It’s invariably the people from country firms who are are most interested in what’s going on and the most consistent in voting. 

Weirdly enough, even though the society membership has increased substantially, the number of votes lodged for councillor elections has not risen in step with the size of the membership.

It’s also extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find details of the president’s payment (honorarium). Ages ago there was a suggestion that the president would be paid the salary of a District Court judge and have digs at the Toaster, next to the Opera House. 

The CEO is said to earn in the vicinity of $700,000 – but who knows, as it’s not disclosed. 

Instead of all the jockeying about the composition of the Law Society council, it might be more productive for executive members to sit down with the attorney general and work out how to reform the complaints and discipline system, which secret sources say is shambolic. 

Report to members on composition and governance of the council of the Law Society