Legal directions in Wales: an interview with John Griffiths AM

Richard Owen, Deputy Head of Glamorgan Law School and UKCLE’s Consultant for Wales, recently met with John Griffiths AM, Counsel General of the Welsh Assembly Government to discuss current trends in legal education and other legal matters in Wales.

The full interview is available to listen to as a podcast.

Richard Owen: Could you tell us about the Counsel General’s role, and why you aren’t called an Attorney General, for example?

John Griffiths: In essence, the Counsel General is the authoritative legal advisor to the Welsh Assembly Government. It is the Counsel General that provides the final advice to Welsh Assembly Government as to whether a particular proposal is within their powers or not, or indeed whether they should take particular action with regard to a judicial review or any other legal matter. I’m not called an attorney general because there is one Attorney General in the UK and we still have that single legal jurisdiction for England and Wales so we certainly wouldn’t want to create any confusion.

RO: What are your expectations of the law schools in Wales and the UK generally? Do you see them having a role in researching possible areas of law reform now we have a specific body of Welsh law?

JG: Yes, there is a big role for the universities and law schools in the UK to understand that we are now in a very different constitutional and legal situation because we have devolution. It’s something that is fairly new to the UK, we’ve had a very centralised political system for an awful long time. Now we have devolution we have developing bodies of law within the component parts of the UK and this does need to be recognised and factored into legal education, otherwise students wouldn’t really be getting the up to date and complete picture, which is obviously what they need to have. There is scope for research as to what extent there has developed a separate body of law in Wales and how processes and systems have changed.

RO: What about the public engagement role? Do you see law schools becoming involved in pro bono work?

JG: Absolutely, I have in my early stages of being Counsel General asked officials to get some sort of picture of the amount of pro bono work going on in Wales and to look at how perhaps we could have an overview of what happens, what benefits does it deliver, are there gaps, does it really fit in with government strategy, for example around social inclusion. So if you’re looking at community regeneration for example, you’ve got a host of people and organisations trying to develop constitutions, understand how they need to structure themselves in order to access funding, and relate to other organisations and achieve their objectives. There’s an awful lot of scope for pro bono work to link with that sort of community regeneration/ social inclusion policy, trying to ensure that where there are gaps in accessing legal advice and assistance how that could best be filled. So I’m very interested in that, and I think the universities and law schools would have a body of expertise and capacity to bring to that work.

RO: Widening accessing to law schools and the legal profession is something I know from one of your first interviews you’re interested in. Under active consideration at the moment is the possibility of law schools accepting people with lower grades from working class backgrounds and so on. What about other ways of diversifying entry, such as the legal executive route or part time study or block study?

JG: What I’d like to do really is to conduct an exercise in understanding what the issues are. Just what are the backgrounds of the law students we have in Wales? What’s the composition of the profession here in Wales? Once we get that picture we should be able to understand what the issues are in terms of social class. Then I think it would be a very good exercise to draw together a number of key players – the universities, the law schools, the professional bodies and others – to look at the picture that we’ve established and then to decide how we might go about ensuring better equality of opportunity for all sections of society in Wales. Looking at the grades required of working class students to get into law school is one part of it, but there are big questions about how open and accessible the professions themselves are.

RO: It’s quite an unusual situation having one legal jurisdiction in England in Wales, but in some areas separate laws now emerging in Wales. Do you see a separate legal profession forming in Wales?

JG: Because it’s such early days for devolution in the UK, it’s quite difficult really to look ahead with any degree of confidence in terms of forecasting what the structure of the profession might be. But at the moment we’ve got such a long history of a single legal jurisdiction for England and Wales, and everything at all sorts of levels and in all sorts of ways is tied together so closely that we should progress as we are. As things develop down the track it will be important to keep absolutely everything under review and reassess how we could most effectively go forward. I would be very reluctant to rule anything in or out at this early stage of devolution. It makes sense to make sure we’re not too revolutionary at this stage.

RO: In Wales we’re now getting regulations from Brussels, from Westminster, from Whitehall, from the Welsh Assembly Government, from the National Assembly. It’s very hard for the ordinary citizen to keep up with the legal position. Do you think we’ll be having a Welsh Statute Book so we’ll have greater transparency as to the regulatory position in Wales?

JG: Anything that helps ordinary people to understand where we are with law here in Wales – what developments there have been, how the Welsh Statute Book has developed – are very valuable because it’s one of the basics of having an effective system of law that the ordinary citizen can readily find out what the law is. I think we will see developments and we have seen developments in that direction. We would also hope to make the Welsh Assembly Government website as user friendly as possible, again to help people understand what the legal position is and how the systems work. Of course, there are others who help us in this regard, including again the universities in Wales and the law schools, and we’re very pleased with that assistance.

RO: The new type of Welsh laws, Welsh measures, are being developed bilingually. Do you think there is a need for more bilingual lawyers in Wales?

JG: There is a need for more bilingual lawyers in Wales at all levels. That’s part of the general picture of trying to create a more bilingual Wales. We have a policy called the Iaith Pawb which is about just that, creating a more truly bilingual country. It’s a challenge in terms of all aspects of service delivery in Wales, and economic activity. As part of that it would be very positive indeed if we had more bilingual lawyers so that legal services could be delivered in the spirit of a bilingual Wales.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010