The number of solicitors practising in Ireland has passed 10,000 for the first time. Figures from the Law Society of Ireland show there was a 4% increase in the number of people holding practising certificates in 2016. A practising certificate is required by any solicitor in order to provide any legal services here. The increase is partly due to Brexit, and the Law Society said that 806 lawyers from England and Wales have entered the Roll in Ireland.
Law Society Director General Ken Murphy said the 4% increase reflects the increased demand for lawyers and is pretty much in line with growth in the economy. Mr Murphy also said that the Law Society publishes a table which shows the 20 largest law firms and the number of solicitors with practising licenses. Every individual lawyer who wants to practice and offer services to the public has be issued with a practising certificate from the Law Society every year.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has emerged as the 11th biggest law firm in Ireland, despite the fact that the firm has no Irish office and says it has, as yet, no plans to open one. Mr Murphy said that the firm - the seventh biggest law firm in the world - is one of the so-called 'Magic Circle' firm, an informal term for what are generally considered the leading law firms headquartered in the UK. He said the company has issued 87 practising certificates here to preserve their status post Brexit in dealing with European Union institutions and legal privileges in EU investigations.
Mr Murphy said the truth about everything to do with Brexit is uncertainty and no-one really knows. But he added that the Law Society has seen no evidence so far of UK-based law firms moving to Dublin, or anywhere in Ireland. However, that may change if businesses or their clients move to Dublin
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MORNING BRIEFS - Bank of Ireland is to establish a holding company as part of its strategy to deal with new regulatory requirements put in place to deal with any future financial crisis. This will likely see the bank hold deposits in a separate operating company. The holding company would in future issue any new equity or take on debt by selling bonds. The structure would separate ordinary savers from shareholders and bondholders upon whom losses would be imposed through what's known as a bail in under new EU rules in the event the bank runs into difficulty in future.
*** It lost more than €0.5 billion dollars, makes no promise about when and how it might turn a profit and wants investors to buy shares that offer no right to vote on how the company is run. The firm in question is Snap, the owner of Snapchat. It has just published registration documents ahead of a planned listing of its shares on the New York Stock Exchange which could happen as early as this month. Snap wants to raise $3 billion. The IPO could value it at up to $25 billion and would make billionaires of founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. Snapchat has 158 million daily active users. They use its app to create, edit and share picture and video messages and some of them have bought its video camera glasses. It wants investors to buy into the growth story. Snap had revenue of just over $400m in the fourth quarter of last year and its revenue per user more than trebled in that period compared to the same three months in 2015.
*** Last year was the best since 2011 for new Irish website registrations according to IEDR, the organisation which manages Ireland's .ie internet domain. There were almost 35,000 .ie domains registered last year - the highest total in five years. But Ireland still ranks relatively poorly in comparison to its European peers in terms of its citizens' online presence. There are 47 .ie domains registered per 1,000 citizens. That puts us joint 18th out of 22 European countries measured.
