REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE LAW SOCIETY’S NEW EDUCATION CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE LAW SOCIETY’S NEW EDUCATION CENTRE MONDAY, 2 OCTOBER, 2000
I am delighted to join you this morning to open the Law Society’s Education Centre and I would like to thank Tony Ensor for the kind invitation.
Over a year ago, I saw the model of this building before any construction work had started when it was still the stuff of dreams and imagination. I am delighted to see that the reality has lived up to and indeed probably surpassed all expectations. It is of course more than a building. It is a statement about the future, the shape of that future and what lies at the heart of it for the legal profession. In this marriage of old and new, of traditional and modern on the Law Society campus this building is a very important crossing point from past to future.
The Smithfield area of Dublin has had quite a make-over in recent times. Now to its rich architectural heritage has been added this Centre with its contemporary design which complements the historic premises of the Law Society and the heritage of the area as a whole. It puts the mark of another generation on the history of this city and this profession.
The entire £5 million cost is I know being borne by the profession and that in itself says something about the commitment of this generation of lawyers to excellence in professional education and formation as well as to the aesthetics of the capital city. I congratulate everyone who has supported the project and who has worked towards it successful completion.
The Law Society has been historically charged with responsibility for the education of solicitors. It’s a role which I have some particular insight into from a past life. It is a truism to remark on the pace of change affecting every aspect of life and every kind of livelihood but few professions have faced the avalanche of change which has engulfed the law. While moving with the new technologies, the demands of the consumer, the changes in the labour market, the sheer volume of this thing we call “the law” has grown to gargantuan proportions. From flotations to tribunals, from interpreting EU directives to developing our constitutional jurisprudence, from drafting wills, to making life and death decisions on finely tuned ethical and moral considerations, the lawyers life is a kaleidoscope of the most diverse endeavour. Somehow the education and training of new generations of law students has to prepare them for this world. It has to equip them with the skills and confidence they will need to begin growing their careers and it has to convince the rest of the profession and the public that this is a job done well. Today’s young lawyers will be called to absorb much change over their lifetimes but like a spine running through all that change one thing cannot change and that is the call for each to be exemplars and ambassadors par excellence of a profession which the public has confidence and trust in.
This generation has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of solicitors practising in Ireland. Their milieu is Ireland and Europe; an outward looking Ireland dynamically engaged with many parts of the globe. Their milieu is the complexity of Irish life but that too may routinely involve transborder and global legal practice. The demands made of them are considerable.
You as a profession have taken that message to heart. You know that in order to provide a quality service tailored to the needs and expectations of clients the modern lawyer must be very comfortably adapted to this changed and changing environment, he or she must be out in front not lagging behind. In this place they will learn new skills, new applications, they will unlearn ways that are past their sell-by date and they in turn will become the next generation to drive forward this profession with foresight and commitment.
As I remarked a moment ago - in another life I was privileged to have a particular insight into the work here at Blackhall Place and I am very proud of the fact that this Society’s high reputation for leading edge legal professional training courses is and long has been, acknowledged by its counterparts across these islands and much farther afield.
Once again you lead the field. In a few days time this Centre will welcome 360 new Professional Practice Course students. They will enter a new building and also a newly introduced new educational model. They will have extensive computer training facilities and state of the art technology at their fingertips. Many of us who have been down the older and more travelled roads would wish to have been born a generation or two later! Yet for all the gadgetry and it is important gadgetry they will still learn in this place and in their professional lives that the law is fundamentally about people, about the intricacies and consequences of human behaviour. Over 2,000 years ago, Cicero wrote that “the good of the people is the chief law”. It is a motto still worth keeping to the forefront of our minds as we look to the needs of our society in the 21st century, and the role that lawyers, can play in addressing those needs. Looking at this building, at the financial investment in it and the intellectual investment in what goes on in it, I think the Law Society of Ireland can take righteous pride in the profession as it sets out on the journey through this new millennium.
It gives me great pleasure to open this new building and to wish every student who passes through its doors every success in the future.