Minister Alan Shatter TD, speaking in Dáil Éireann was speaking about the PhD research of Dr Maeve Hosier, undertaken in NUI Galway, on the evolution of the legal profession

The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter praised NUI Galway, School of Law graduate, Dr Maeve Hosier’s PhD thesis during a recent parliamentary debate on the Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011.

Minister Shatter described Dr Hosier’s PhD on The Regulation of the Legal Profession in Ireland as a “marvellous” study, which “should be compulsory reading for us all.” The Law graduate’s PhD thesis was supervised by Professor Laurent Pech, formerly of the School of Law at NUI Galway, now Head of the Law Department at Middlesex University London.

Highlighting Maeve Hosier’s thesis during the parliamentary debate the Minister stated, “One Maeve Hosier has written a marvellous PhD thesis entitled The Regulation of the Legal Profession in Ireland, which should be compulsory reading for us all. It sets out the history of the legal profession and how it evolved. It evolved continually until approximately 1870 and then went into paralysis and nothing has changed since.”

The Minister continued, “The only thing that has changed subsequently was as a result of the enactment of the Courts Act 1971, when the then Minister for Justice, Des O'Malley, conferred rights of audience on solicitors in all the superior courts. That is the only fundamental change effected since approximately 1870 to the manner in which the Irish legal profession operates. It is extraordinarily curious that people think the world stopped in 1870.”

Professor Laurent Pech said, “Maeve’s thesis on the Regulation of the Legal Profession in Ireland makes a decisive contribution to the on-going scholarly and policy debates on this issue, by evaluating the present regulatory framework and offering a number of suggestions to improve it in a context of increasing transnationalisation of the market for legal services.

Professor Pech continued, “Her innovative approach to the problem of lawyers’ misconduct is, in particular, worth noting. This aspect of her work has the potential to help alleviate a problem which has been extremely costly for both the legal profession and wider society alike. Her doctoral research also provides a valuable insight into the impact of the Troika upon the regulation of the legal profession in so-called ‘bailed-out countries’. Maeve should be congratulated for having made an exceptional contribution to the current debate on the regulation of the legal profession both nationally and internationally. I have no doubt that her original and thought-provoking work will be useful to policy-makers and scholars alike.”

Maeve Hosier is originally from Belfast and currently living in Connemara, she graduated from NUI Galway last month (February 2014) with a PhD in Law. Maeve's thesis has been deposited in the James Hardiman Library at NUI Galway.

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