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CAPSL GENERAL MEETINGS
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To view minutes of previous meetings please
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General Meetings
MELBOURNE APRIL 2003
THE SECRETARY’S REPORT - APPENDIX B
The aims of the
Association are: |
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to promote interest
within the Commonwealth in all aspects of public sector law and its
practice; |
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to provide a focus
and forum for the exchange of information and ideas; |
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to support public
sector lawyers in the carrying out their professional duties:
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to provide machinery
for the organisation or promotion of training and consultancy services
for public sector lawyers;
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to assist the
Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Lawyers Association and the
organisers of the Commonwealth Law Conferences on all matters relating
to public sector law and its practice; and
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to undertake any
activity relevant to and calculated to implement and foster all or any
of the preceding aims. |
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Introduction.
- The purpose of this report is to set the
scene for the consideration of later items on this agenda. It starts by
recording where we have come from to provide an historical record for the
future as well as a background for those who are new to the Association. It
then considers what we have (or have not) achieved so far. Finally it seeks to
identify the issues that we need now (or may need in the relatively near
future) to address.
The
Past.
- The idea of such an association as this
stems from a discussion on the steps of the Aotea Centre in Auckland during
the course of the 9th Commonwealth Law Conference in 1990 by three
local government delegates, who felt that there was little of sufficient
interest in what was otherwise an excellent programme, to attract local
government lawyers particularly and government lawyers generally. It was
agreed that something needed to be done to ensure that future such conferences
were more relevant to public sector lawyers and I was asked to explore the
possibilities.
- One of the reasons behind my attendance
at the conference, which was funded by the Law Society Local Government Group
of England and Wales, was to try and establish links with local government
lawyers in other Commonwealth jurisdictions for our mutual benefit. The Group
had therefore few if any reservations in subsequently agreeing to support my
eventual proposal that we should try and establish a commonwealth-wide public
sector lawyers association and that the Group should fund the establishment
costs.
- In the run up to the Nicosia Conference
in 1993 arrangements were made, with the assistance of the Commonwealth
Lawyers Association which I had by then joined, for an exploratory meeting to
be held as at the Nicosia Conference. Carl Rattray QC, the Jamaican Attorney
General, accepted an invitation to address the meeting on the theme “The
Lawyer – the key to sound Public Sector Administration”. The meeting was in
consequence well attended and at its conclusion, there being unanimous support
for establishment of a public sector lawyers association, it was agreed to
establish a steering committee with myself as Secretary. There was the promise
of assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat who felt that its
establishment would have wide-ranging benefits. The task of the steering
committee was to make arrangements for a further meeting at the next
Conference and to prepare a draft constitution for discussion on that
occasion.
- Unfortunately little support was
forthcoming from those who had volunteered themselves as members of the
Steering Committee but with help from the Commonwealth Secretariat and the
Commonwealth Military Lawyers Association a draft constitution was eventually
put together. After much correspondence David Gates, a Canadian lawyer who was
at the time Chairman of the CBA Public Sector Lawyers Conference, eventually
agreed to take responsibility for making the detailed arrangements for and for
chairing the proposed meeting in Vancouver in 1996. He thus became in practice
de facto Chair and the only active member of the Steering Committee and the
emerging association.
- The Vancouver Conference was immediately
preceded by a highly successful one day seminar organised by David for his CBA
colleagues but to which all public sector lawyers attending the Conference
were made welcome. During the course of the Conference the inaugural meeting
of the Association was held at which refreshments were kindly provided at the
expense of Sweet & Maxwell. There was a stimulating address by the late John
Tait, at the time the Deputy Justice Minister of Canada, on the theme “The
Public Service Lawyer; Service to the Client and the Rule of Law”. An
interesting discussion of the draft constitution then followed. On one point,
the composition of a small representative Executive Committee, there were
diverging views and in consequence the draft was approved only as a working
document until the next Conference. The contentious issue was left for further
discussion between the Commonwealth Secretariat and me as, by then, the duly
elected Association Secretary. Dato Heliliah Yusof, Solicitor General of
Malaysia, as the nominated representative of the host country for the next
conference, was duly elected as Association Chairman
- In Kuala Lumpur in 1999, a seminar was
not arranged although the Association took joint responsibility for organising
and providing speakers for a plenary Conference session on Judicial Review. As
the Minutes of the General Meeting on that occasion are attached to this
agenda, the meeting calls for no further comment at this point except to say
that it subsequently became necessary to identify, in the light of the
continuing problems in Zimbabwe, an Australian lawyer to take over the
Association Chairmanship. With the concurrence of the President of the
Commonwealth Lawyers Association, James Syme the Victorian Government
Solicitor agreed to take on the task and was duly appointed. He has since been
a tireless help in preparation for our involvement in the Melbourne
Conference.
The Present
- It will be clear from the preceding
paragraphs that such associations are not easily or quickly established.
However, since 1996 as the succeeding paragraphs attempt to show we have made
steady if slow progress towards building a viable association. Initially the
priority was to promote and develop our membership base. This remains a key
task although since 1999 the development and subsequent maintenance of the web
site has had equal importance
- Although we are not as yet an accredited
Commonwealth NGO, we are reasonably hopeful that we might soon be.
Nevertheless we already feature links from and to all key web sites eg IBA,
CLA, Commonwealth Secretariat. We also feature in a number of relevant
reference books. We are also being invited to take part in Commonwealth and
NGO related events.
- We have an approved Constitution which
clearly sets out our objectives and whilst it may from time to time require
modest amendment it should provide us with a workable document for the
foreseeable future.
- Since 1999 we have established our own
web site which is regularly updated on a monthly basis. The second phase of
its development has been held in abeyance pending experience with the
maintenance and usage of the first phase. It is already a valuable tool for
members who wish to keep up to date as well as a useful means of promoting the
Association to a wider audience, particularly potential members. All the
Association’s basic records are currently available on the site and open for
inspection without restriction. We also now have at least a biannual
newsletter emailed or air mailed direct to each member.
- Our membership currently stands at 23
Institutional members (9 associations and 14 government legal services) and 70
Individual members. The members are representative of 24 of the 54
Commonwealth countries and the Commonwealth Secretariat. All but 4 members
been able to provide an email address which not only speeds up communication
but keeps administrative costs to a minimum. This latter point is particularly
important at the present time as we are a subscription free association and
reliant on a sponsor to cover our administrative expenditure.
- Member recruitment has not been as fast
as we would have hoped given the enthusiasm at the 1999 meeting of the
Association and the launch of the web site in October 2001. We have as yet no
members, institutional or individual, in more than 50% of the Commonwealth
countries and have only persuaded a very small proportion of government legal
services to provide information for our web site and at the same time become
institutional members. Those services that have joined also include a number
of state and provincial services not originally in contemplation when the site
was first launched and so the proportion of national services is even smaller
than the statistics would suggest.
- Individual Member retention also remains
a problem for two reasons. We recruit well at each Conference from the host
nation but the majority who join, with little prospect of attending future
conferences and association meetings, soon fall by the way side. A further
difficulty stems from the use of email rather than postal addresses. Members
are mobile and whilst an air mail stands a chance of being forwarded,
computers are much less forgiving and a significant proportion of emailed
material is returned as undeliverable. If all members would only leave a
forwarding address for both purposes or advise the Secretary of any changes,
life would be easier and we would lose fewer members.
The
Future
- In both the immediate future and in the
longer term we are faced with a number of problems some of which will require
resolution at the Melbourne meeting. These will be considered in the following
paragraphs.
- The most important immediate issue for
the Association is the election of Association officers for the period 2003 to
the next Conference. If current policy is followed then the Chair will be
taken by a senior public sector lawyer from the host nation for that
Conference, now probably the United Kingdom. As soon as the venue is confirmed
steps will be taken to identify a nominee who will be prepared in particular
to organise the Association’s participation in that Conference as James Syme
as done so well for the Melbourne Conference. It was hoped that there would be
such a nominee available for election at our meeting but as this now seems
unlikely James Syme has indicated that he would be prepared to continue as
Chairman pending the appointment of his successor. More important is the
identification of a new Secretary who will need to identify, under the terms
of the Constitution, a nominee from the same jurisdiction for election as
Treasurer. No formal nomination for the role of Secretary has so far been
received although Greg Ross (Australia) May yet be prepared to stand in if no
one else comes forward. Any nominations, also identifying a nominee to become
Treasurer, should be sent as soon as possible to the Secretary from whom
further details of the role can be obtained.
- Equally important will be the future
financing of the Association. As mentioned above the Law Society Local
Government Group agreed to fund the cost of establishing the Association and
has continued to meet all its subsequent administrative costs. Its Trust Fund
has also committed funds to cover the cost of developing both phases of the
web site. Whilst the money for phase two (the development of a secure section
in which members can publish papers on which they would welcome comments and
problems on which they would like advice from colleagues) will remain
available, the Group will cease funding the Association’s administrative costs
from the conclusion of the Melbourne Conference. There would seem to be three
possible alternative sources of funding available – subscription, grant or
sponsorship. The new Secretary will need to resolve this issue quickly.
- We are at present a subscription free
association with very modest costs. The cost of subscription collection from
individual members would have increased substantially our costs and involved
an unacceptable additional amount of Secretarial time. Collection from
Institutional members would have been possible. However at a time when we had
funding and we were trying to develop the membership base, both Individual and
Institutional, the absence of subscriptions was seen as positive. The
introduction of subscriptions for all Institutional members may now be the
best way forward particularly if expenditure is going to increase
significantly. It could, however, be introduced for professional institutions
only or for government legal services only. In either case it could be limited
to those in the more developed countries – Australia, Canada and the United
Kingdom. Subscriptions for Individual members, for both cost and time reasons,
would still seem to be undesirable.
- As to grant, it could be that the
professional institution or government legal service of the country to which
the new Secretary belonged would be prepared to cover the Association’s
administrative expenditure on the same basis as the Law Society Local
Government Group has done so far. Alternatively a charity or employer in the
same country might be prepared to do so. In this event it would probably be
necessary to restrict expenditure to broadly its present level.
- Whether there would be any scope for the
sponsorship route is questionable but might be worth a try if this is felt by
the Association to be an acceptable option. The obvious targets would be a
legal practice with a significant public sector involvement or a commercial
organisation in, say, the publishing or IT field which provides services to
government. We could in return offer advertising on the web site, the
Newsletters, the notepaper and any other publications.
- The next issue is the future of the web
site. Will this be maintained by the new Secretary and, if not, by whom and at
what extra cost? I would be prepared to carry on as now for a while,
particularly if we decide to go ahead with the second phase of its
development, but an early decision is needed as to the longer term. The second
phase of development is intended to provide a secure section in which members
can publish papers on which they would welcome comments and problems on which
they would like advice from colleagues. This phase would not be difficult to
develop but it will increase administration particularly in terms of the issue
and tracking of passwords. If we go down this route is there any section of
the site at present, eg the membership records, which we should move to the
secure section?
- Before a decision to proceed is taken we
need to be satisfied that such a facility is wanted and would be used. An
analysis of the use of the site for the first 8 months of 2002 – detailed
figures are unfortunately not available for subsequent months because of
current software problems – show that the site only attracted 276 hits from
only 14 Commonwealth countries and 50% of these were UK hits which included
mine in the course of site management. The apparent limited present usage of
the site by members raises doubts whether further site development would be
justified although it could be that the existence of the new secure facility
would encourage greater use of the site by members.
- The next issue is the Newsletter. Can we
and if so should we seek to improve the content and frequency of the
Newsletter or is the regular monthly updating of the web site with a
newsletter two or three times a year adequate?
- We clearly need to tackle the membership
recruitment and retention problems. In particular what more can we do to
encourage government legal services to sign up to the Association as
Institutional members and provide information for the web site database
considered so important by those present at the meeting in Kuala Lumpur? As an
aid to recruitment we also need to clarify the present membership provisions
in the Constitution as indeed the Commonwealth Lawyers Association itself is
also seeking to do. Suggestions to this end have been canvassed in recent
Newsletters and have attracted no comments positive or negative. Specific
proposals to this end are therefore included on the agenda for our Melbourne
meeting.
- Are there areas where we can improve
services to members within the terms of the Association’s objects? In
particular are there any training needs that the Association should try and
promote beyond those that already exist. Would there be support for say a
biennial public sector lawyers’ workshop to be organised by the Association in
conjunction with the Legal Director of the Commonwealth Secretariat? This
would certainly be cheaper and provide a more focused solution to training
needs than anything that we could organise in conjunction with the
Commonwealth Law Conferences.
Postscript
- I make no apologies for the length of
this report as it is by way of a handover document as well as providing
background for our Melbourne meeting. It only remains for me to say how much I
have enjoyed my involvement in the establishment and running of our
Association although it has at times proved to be a very frustrating job! I am
sure that the Association is a very necessary addition to the Commonwealth
legal framework and trust that it will continue to have the support of not
only the Commonwealth Lawyers Association but also the Commonwealth Law
Ministers and the Legal and Constitutional Division of the Commonwealth
Secretariat which is essential if the Association is to develop into the force
for good governance and the rule of law throughout the Commonwealth that I am
sure it will become.
cjdr 15 March 2003
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