If your firm’s managing partner is singing ‘All I want for Christmas is an LLP’, then they may well get their wish, according to the Law Society’s director general, Ken Murphy. The Society has been offering every assistance and encouragement to ensure this.

On 24 August 2018, the Law Society made a detailed submission, accompanied by a comprehensive set of draft regulations, to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority on limited liability partnerships (LLPs).

The purpose was to assist the authority in its preparation of draft regulations. These regulations will enable firms of solicitors to practise with limitation of liability, as envisaged by sections 122 to 132 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015.

In force

While this part of the act is not yet in force, Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has made clear to the Society that he will make the commencement order as soon as the authority has drafted the necessary LLP regulations. The authority has committed to doing this before the end of 2018.

Thereafter, partnerships of solicitors will be able to register as LLPs. A partner in an LLP will not be personally liable, directly or indirectly, for liabilities of the partnership, in accordance with the provisions specified in section 123 of the act.

Lobbying

The Law Society has been lobbying for this modernising measure, available to partnerships of lawyers in many other jurisdictions, since it originally made a submission to Government on the topic as long ago as 2001.

The Society’s 11-page submission to the authority, and a proposed draft text of regulations, was invited by the authority for the assistance it might offer in the preparations of its own draft regulations.

Many months preparing

“A working group comprising both Council members and Society staff, with expertise in partnership and regulatory law and in associated policy, spent many months preparing the submission,” according to Murphy.

The director general has been pressing this issue relentlessly ever since the Society’s submission to Government in 2001 – which he helped to draft – and believes that the end is in sight at last. The LLP, like Christmas, is coming.