The incoming president also shares why implementing a subscription model was necessary
Earlier this week, New Zealand Law Society | Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa president-elect David Campbell told us why he considers it a privilege to become president of the organisation and why he’s excited to step into the role. In the second part of this interview, he tells NZ Lawyer why the Law Society’s subscription service is a key contribution to the legal profession in New Zealand, and why it was important for the organisation to undertake an independent review.
You're presently vice president of the Law Society – from that perspective, what aspect of being president do you expect to be the most challenging part?
I expect that the biggest challenge will be making sure that we're all moving in the right direction – collaboratively, cooperatively, and sticking to our strategy. The Law Society's put in place really excellent regulatory and representative strategies, and it's getting dividends from sticking to them and delivering on them. So I think the challenge is to not get distracted, to not get diverted, and to make sure we stick to the plan.
You've been with the Law Society since 2014 – what would you say has been the Law Society's biggest contribution to or biggest accomplishment in relation to the legal profession in New Zealand?
So the Law Society's been delivering a lot of great representative services to members, but it hadn't been recovering any of the cost of doing so. In an expense sense, that ceased to be sustainable, so the challenge was making it sustainable. The way to achieve that was introducing a subscription. The downside with that was we were going to lose members, and that is what's happened.
But I think the more positive way to look at it is, we’ve secured a great deal of members who do want to be part of the Law Society and do value what it's doing, so the membership exceeds 10,000. And the subscription fee has put the representative division of the Law Society in a really much stronger financial position, and we're on a journey to ultimately profit. We're certainly in a position where we’re now sustainable and viable in in the representative space, so that is I think for sure the biggest accomplishment in the last few years.
What role did you play in putting that subscription together?
I was part of the board that worked together which saw the issue and was working in conjunction with an executive leadership team that was acutely aware of the issue. We all got ourselves all on the same page about what needed to be done – some momentous decisions had to be made, and then we got the Law Society's council up to speed and on board too. We got ourselves into a position where there was a lot of support for the move, it wasn't a case of reluctance to do it – people were committed to doing it.
And one of the things about doing it is it really focuses the mind on the value of your offering. It means the Law Society's representative division needs to focus on members’ needs, what members want, what they value, and deliver it in an efficient, timely and cost-effective way. It arose out of difficulty, but it's generated a lot of positives.
Do you consider the subscription to be the most important contribution that the Law Society has made to the profession as a whole at this point?
I think in terms of the Law Society's development, that's growth and progress. It's been the most important thing in in recent years, certainly, in that division.
On the regulatory side, I think the Law Society did the right thing by undertaking an independent review. It was a large investment, but it's important that with its regulator head on, the Law Society promotes best practices in relation to the way in which lawyers should be regulated. That's not for the benefit of lawyers – I see that as being for the benefit of consumers and lawyers. Those two go hand in hand: lawyers want consumers to be well served, and the starting point in ensuring that we do deliver for consumers is making sure that we're properly regulated. So that's also a very significant achievement.
But it's one that's also outside of our hands – we can't it realise alone, in contrast to representative strategy where we can have a plan and deliver it on it, and we're exclusively responsible for how well we do. On the regulatory side, legislative reform’s required to achieve all of the recommendations the Law Society's accepted that were made by that independent panel. In that sense, we're in the hands of government and others.
In the third part of this interview, Campbell tells us his top priorities as president and shares the most important thing he learned from his predecessor.
