RateYourSolicitor website decides to remove controversial remark

national | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Thursday October 05, 2006 10:46 by Free Speech Lover

On Sept. 1st, a lewd comment was left on www.Rate-Your-Solicitor.com about a Dublin based barrister, Jayne Maguire, who rang John Gill, P.R.O. of the Victims of the Legal Profession, to ask him to remove the comment. She explained to him that a male colleague had left this comment about her. When John said that he had no control over the website, Ms Maguire initiated a defamation suit against John through McCann FitzGerald Solicitors, who told John he may face imprisonment if he does not have the offensive material removed as per a High Court injunction issued by Judge Michael Hanna.

The RYS management has noted Mr. John Gill's appeal to have the original remarks posted in this place about Ms Jayne Maguire, barrister, removed in order to stop his continued harassment by Irish lawyers. This harassment is completely uncalled for, as RYS is a completely independent organization without any legal ties whatsoever to the VLPS, and neither Mr. Gill nor any other members of the VLPS committee have ever had any knowledge of or influence on RYS policies.

Even though RYS does not operate under Irish law, being located outside the Irish jurisdiction, and despite delays due to severe technical difficulties, management has unanimously decided to accede to Mr. Gill's appeal as a token of good will and as a once-off gesture to a greatly admired man. May he be a thorn in the side of all incompetent, negligent and corrupt Irish lawyers for a long time to come!

Of course, management does have to reserve the right, however reluctantly, to reinstate the comments about Ms Maguire without further notice, if her utterly misguided proceedings against Mr. Gill and the other members of the VLPS committee should continue beyond Oct. 5, 2006.

In the interest of equal treatment Ms Maguire has now been allocated her own individual page on the RYS website (County Dublin) with one "Avoid" rating posted by RYS due to her unnecessarily heavy-handed treatment of completely innocent people. Her attitude is all the more deplorable because, as RYS has been reliably informed, she knows full well who actually posted the offending remarks, but preferred instead to pursue the wholly innocent Mr. Gill, rather than the real culprit, apparently in the hope of thereby creating an opportunity for the legal establishment to eliminate the RYS website altogether. In this context RYS finds it hard to justify, but typical of the Irish legal system, that the feelings of the about 1/6 of all lawyers on the site with an actual "Avoid" rating are generally considered much more important than the interests of the rather more deserving 5/6!

Please note that the general public is now invited to give its own opinion about Ms Maguire's *professional* competence. Given Ms Maguire's sensitivities it should be stressed that no other comments will be acceptable.

An "Avoid" rating has also been posted for McCann FitzGerald (Dublin) for their stubborn persistence in the abuse of their much vaunted "internet expertise" to intimidate the innocent.

Some comments as regards those "experts" (mostly journalists and lawyers) who called for RYS to require people to identify themselves before being allowed to post on the site:

RYS knows from its own extensive legal experience in many countries and from the experiences of the VLPS in Ireland that a majority of people with clearly legitimate grievances are nevertheless *scared to death* (and not always without reason) of the perceived power of their legal advisers to harm them. It is equally obvious that in practice many Irish solicitors are more than happy to play on these fears when it suits them.

Added to the call for identification was the very naive idea of moderating sometimes hundreds of strongly felt comments each day to a libel-proof standard, even though most of the RYS volunteer moderators, who already reject more than 20% of comments as unsuitable, did not even recognize Ms Maguire's offending phrase as offensive when asked. The only possible outcome of following all this presumably well-meant advice is a self-congratulatory talking shop for Irish solicitors of no conceivable use to the public, their clients.

It is quite clear that a site like RYS needs teeth to be effective and this fundamental guiding principle will of course remain unchanged. On the other hand, it should also be kept in mind that everybody is free to post a comment on the site or in the new RYS Forum to refute whatever comment about themselves is objected to. While the objections people have to the RYS site are extremely varied (one solicitor even objects to being in the Hall of Fame!), reasonable people with reasonable problems would obviously receive more sympathy from RYS than the people behind Ms Maguire, who seem to recognize no other methods than the good old intimidation tactics of the past. Although this method of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut may well have worked in the past, they will simply have to adjust to the fact that the Internet has changed the world quite dramatically in a very short time. Legal dinosaurs like these, who refuse to adapt to an ever-increasing call for transparency and accountability will inevitably lose their client base and face a well-deserved extinction. The consumer of legal services in Ireland has finally been empowered and is, quite rightly, likely to become more and more demanding in the future. Third rate service for first rate prices will no longer be tolerated!

Finally, some comments on the controversial subject of postings regarding the private lives of solicitors:

RYS management agrees that in many cases such postings are irrelevant to the professional competence of a legal practitioner. However, as most lawyers rightly or wrongly still consider themselves pillars of society and as such above criticism, the very least they can do for their clients, who are after all financing their very comfortable lifestyles, is to let their private lives reflect this presumed high standard. Apart from that, some aspects of private lifestyle can very well be of great influence on professional competence. A simple example would be an alcoholic, or drug user, who would on the basis of that fact alone be unacceptable as a legal adviser to most people; even a solicitor's appearance may well be relevant in some cases, where a client would try to project a certain image. Many similar scenarios are possible, so that remarks of a personal nature cannot reasonably be rejected by RYS automatically, although they should be kept to a minimum. In the final analysis however, every poster, including the originator of the Maguire remarks (which in the robust language of 21st century Ireland may well have been intended more as humorous rather than malicious), should simply keep in mind that they are solely responsible for their own postings and act accordingly.

Management had fully expected the initial months of RYS to be somewhat tumultuous, but is confident that the site will quickly find its feet and become an indispensable tool for the Irish consumer of legal services. The many good wishes posted on the Internet and the quick popularity of the site are an indication that it is already becoming so!