Editor’s foreword

My first edition as editor could have been the last. I have since undergone various levels of grilling during the summer conference season and also an earthquake officially rated at 6.4 on the Richter scale. The former was the most complex and difficult involving as it did staying in the room. The later involved a rapid exit from the room, which conference speakers generally only dream of making.

I was amused to find that the hotel staff at the recent successful Solicitors For the Elderly National Conference had asked the organisers: “So will they all be really old then?” They were informed that it was: “Solicitors For the Elderly” and not “Solicitors Who Are Elderly”. The large number who attended will applaud the fact that, even if it was not clear before, SFE is now “of age” and commanding the serious attention of both interested professionals and “the powers that be” throughout the UK legal system.

It having been a “slow news period” in the sweltering heat of August, I have also been reviewing my attitudes. Earthquakes also concentrate the mind. Finally, after much thought, I have decided to break from previous policy and provide precedents as part of the ECA course on protecting the interests of older people. My reluctance to provide precedents is well known but my reasoning less so:

* In my experience busy advisers are often primarily interested in getting to grips with the documentation encapsulating a possible solution. That documentation is perceived by the adviser and the client to be the entire product or service being delivered. In my opinion, this amounts to an implicit agreement to secure the disassociation of professional standards from client requirements. It renders the professional adviser a mere cipher of an ill-informed and ill-served client;
* Clients tend to prefer result to process. Process can feel more expensive to the client than the documentary result. This is because they are involved in the time spent taking instructions, making the initial analysis, and in the giving and receiving of advice and explanations. That is much more so than they are involved in the drafting of the paperwork, which they eventually sign. They may not read that let alone understand it.

Why is this?

Clients inhabit a consumer-orientated society, which can quickly grant any desire for products and services without any time being spent by the consumer apart from at the cash till. For example, they are not at all involved in the process of food or drink manufacture. The milk simply arrives. The cow may as well be an alien. This checkout mentality to purchasing is often brought to their relationship with professionals for their services. Clients may even arrive impatient for the result wanting to sign up before they exit to the mall and continue with their “other” shopping;
Unsurprisingly, therefore, many busy advisers have little time and willingness to consider the seemingly irrelevant ramblings of that leisured class known as authors. They consider learning about a subject, as opposed to learning solutions to a problem, a waste of time. A frivolous occupation that will deprive them of their hard-earned leisure. They sadly forget the wisdom of the eighteenth-century saying: “When house and land are gone and spent, then learning is most excellent.”

All professionals are busy people and quite naturally make legitimate use of precedents to help provide the appropriate result. But some excel both at busyness and at precedents. They are a phenomenon worthy of study. They are those who are busy and use precedents with attitude. There are clearly defined types:

The proudest of the class of busy advisers with attitude are known by the expression: “Precedent flippers” or in certain, particularly intellectual, legal circles simply as “flippers”. Immediately upon receipt of some new professional work, they flip to the back pages where, experience tells them, the precedents usually live. Flippers (and the author is thus labelled a snob by his omission of the common prefix) cause that, strangely invasive, funereal blackening of the edges of the precedent pages in well-known textbooks. The other text remains edged a gleaming white. The uplifting smell of fresh print, unsullied by any merely idle-bones reader, can still be sniffed between those pages;
If no precedents are found at the back of a newly received work, the more advanced flipper will then flip through the whole work. Within seconds the advanced flipper can assess the value of the work. The ancient moneylender’s scales and weights are still in use. “Buy” or “Return” are the judgments scratched upon a little yellow sticker and placed with the book upon the secretarial desk. The new text is thus immediately assessed as either a problem solver or a problem in itself;
The computer flipper is an even more advanced variant. The precedent disk is eagerly removed from the inside back cover of its supporting book. The book is thus rendered as mere heavy packaging or as an impressive ornament so long as its colour matches the desired scheme.

The study of flippers is known as “flippology”. This should not be confused with “flippography”, which considers the whereabouts of dolphins. For the especially interested reader, a degree in flippological studies is possible over the internet from the University of Reykjavik. European funding is invariably available.

This taxonomic excursus has a couple of serious points:

True. Authors do sometimes appear to spin tedious strings of words together to assuage the regulators and the scarred conscience of professions troubled by standards of client care. And it can be very dull to read it - except where it is frightening. It is submitted to be more personally encouraging and productive to understand a subject well and to act accordingly than it is to learn simply how to use a precedent and avoid getting that use wrong. The experience of many professionals attending courses to fulfill their continuing professional-development commitments is instructive. Those who understand a subject may be frightened half to death during the course by some technicality they worry they may have missed in practice. Then they have a sleepless night with hot and cold sweats while the hounds of hell approach. But that turns into great relief. Upon arriving early at the office next morning a shaky-handed examination of the first file within reach reveals they had spotted the potential problem and had addressed it appropriately in their own way. The experience of the flipper who merely learnt the precedent is different. They find they have built their result upon the quicksand of false premises and misunderstanding. Understanding a subject results in better standards and peace of mind;
The busy professional is submitted to be primarily motivated to seek a better quality of life, enhanced income and status. Those who are not are rare and are allowed a quick shudder of latent indignation at reading my impertinence. But to the majority of us hairy-handed sons and daughters of toil we can ponder the validity of the nineteenth-century saying: “The busiest men have the most leisure.” Enough leisure to read, do a hopefully good job for the client and sometimes even to write. Counter-intuitive thinking and counter-intuitive behaviour is not new. Do more now to achieve more later quicker. The result of “productive leisure” can create problems of over-commitment but that is another story. Understanding a subject results in more time, money, credibility and whatever else the reader might want.

It is our hope at ECA that readers will find this magazine practical, businesslike and also a springboard to further reading and learning. It cannot be an end in itself.

Features

Studies in ageing: A new Elderly Client Adviser series in conjunction with the Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing (SISA) Free
ECA is pleased to acknowledge the assistance of SISA in helping to meet the long demand from ECA readers for broader coverage of medico-legal issues related to older clients. Professor Tony Warnes, Director of SISA, is editor of the premier UK social gerontological journal, Ageing & Society, and a past chair of the British Society of Gerontology. He explains what is happening in the world of ageing studies and describes SISA’s activities and its enthusiasm for liaison with ECA. If readers think that the legal environment for elder care is complex, then Tony’s explanation of the current research environment, with its many entities, appears to be even more of a labyrinth. It is anticipated that future articles will cover such issues as raising the quality of care in residential and nursing homes, tackling age discrimination in access to health and social services, and extending end-of-life care principles to patients of all ages and health conditions. Given the high level of recognition of the proposed authors in their fields, ECA readers will eagerly await publication. In the meantime, readers should find the details below a useful source of information and contacts, which may assist in dealing with social policy and client-related issues.

Developments in Inheritance Act claims Free
The general scheme of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependents) Act 1975 (as amended) is probably well known to readers involved in will drafting and in the administration of estates. The aim was to prevent the arbitrary and socially unconscionable effects of both unrestricted will-making and on occasion, the intestacy rules. That is if inadequate financial provision for those who might reasonably expect to be supported by the deceased would result without court intervention. In the first of two articles for ECA, Giles Harrap, barrister of Pump Court Chambers, notes recent developments and current concerns in the context of the Inheritance Act.

Key benefits update Free
Benefits expert Alan Robinson provides an important set of updates on subjects that have so far caused confusion, including in the first case, the close observation of professional-indemnity policies. It is also expected that many older people will fail to apply for the new credit. Given the level of complexity, this is not surprising. ECA readers can help take the lead with the assistance provided in this summary.

ECA course: Protecting the interests of older people Free
In this second section of the ECA course, aimed at assisting beginners in the law affecting the elderly, and at providing useful reminders for those already engaged at expert level, David Coldrick indicates some possible will-planning solutions for the adviser and the client in the context of asset-protection planning.

Regulars

Case digest Free
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