Law Society faces questions after Byrne case reveals huge abuse of solicitor’s privileged position

Trust is a solicitor’s most valuable asset. By stealing clients’ properties and using them to extract €52 million from the banks – a scheme that amounted to the biggest fraud ever to come before the Irish courts – Thomas Byrne abused that trust so thoroughly that the aftershocks of his crime will ripple widely through the profession. The damage Byrne has done to solicitors in general, as Judge Patrick McCartan remarked yesterday, “must be considerable”. It was doubtless with that in mind, and with an eye to the serious questions that fall to it as the representative and regulatory body for solicitors, that the Law Society’s public statements yesterday focused heavily on the steps it took to...