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Plato and the Professions

May 27, 2009

Alex Wade, recently nominated as Sports Feature Writer of the Year in the annual Sports Journalism Awards, reflects on professional life.

“All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.” Thus spoke Plato, and I have a feeling that, were he confronted with today’s British professional landscape, he’d stand by what he said. Let me explain.

A few years ago a trendy concept amid business and professional sectors was the idea of the “porfolio man”. Portfolio Man didn’t have merely one job, and he wasn’t employed, either. He was a self-employed go-getter who wore an array of hats, which would sometimes coalesce, while on other occasions they would appear so diverse as to be bewildering, to himself as much as observers. There are still plenty of Portfolio Men about, and, in truth, the idea is nothing new. Portfolio Man is, by another name, the successful lawyer who becomes a consultant and acquires a few non-executive directorships, or the doctor who carves out dual careers in lecturing and buying and selling art. But while these types of Portfolio Man would traditionally have earned their spurs by dint of years of specialist experience in a chosen field, what happened recently was that Portfolio Man got younger. He began to pop up in his mid-30s as the living, breathing and cash-rich embodiment of the idea that, career-wise, suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder need not be a problem.

I warmed to the idea of Portfolio Man and, for a time, was one. Following my last incarnation as a lawyer (for a sports rights company), I became a freelance journalist, a newspaper lawyer (by night), a writer and a sports rights agent. Looking back over my diaries of that time, I find that on one Monday night I worked at The Times as a night lawyer, before flying to Albania on Tuesday. While there I met with a surprising, given Albania’s size, plethora of broadcasters and pitched the sale of various sports rights properties to them. I also managed to venture into the mountains of Lunxheria, in the south, because I would be writing a travel article on the experience for The Independent. I’d already also interviewed lawyers in Tirana, Albania’s capital, for an article for The Lawyer. Back in England by Thursday afternoon, I completed another shift for a newspaper (this time The Sun), before returning home on Friday to write 2,000 words of my first book, Wrecking Machine.

That week was far from atypical. For a while, I relished the incredible variety of tasks that came my way. I continued to work as a legal consultant, undertaking media risks analysis for a leading insurer; I advised on contracts for a betting and gaming company; I did some PR work for a couple of clients. All this, as well as writing, being a night lawyer and concluding sports rights deals.

But it was exhausting. The mental agility required to jump from one area of expertise to another left me shattered. I became grouchy with my family. I opted to relax with a bottle of red wine, instead of going for a run or walking the dogs. I put time into my kids, but almost invariably the phone would ring from one or other of the people retaining me. I was constantly on call, constantly distracted, and constantly stressed. The demons explored in Wrecking Machine looked as if they might be making a comeback.

It wasn’t difficult, a few years ago, to jettison the sports rights work. Yes, it had been lucrative, but continuing to do it meant spreading myself ever thinner. Shortly afterwards I stopped doing much by way of law.  I also said “no” to all the other tangential bits of work that came in. I opted to concentrate on writing – on one profession, rather than several, as my source of income. Where once I was Portfolio Man, I became Portfolio-free.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as all that. I still flit around, from writing about anything from coastal living, to sport, to law, to travel; to art; you name it, really. But my craft, as a writer, has improved precisely because I’m dedicated to the one thing. I’m not distracted anymore, I’m less stressed, and I’m better at my job.

For me, and, I suspect, many other professionals, Plato’s comment is as applicable today as it was some 2,400 years ago. Being professional, in whatever sphere, entails dedication, delivering a service on time and having integrity. But it also means committing to what one does best, and not – unless, perhaps, one is of a certain age – spreading oneself too thin.

The Rise of the Regulatory State

May 26, 2009

Red tape is everywhere, from edicts issued by schools banning games of conkers to the raft of legislation now governing the professions. If Max Mosley has his way, there will even be laws ending the centuries’ old tradition of “publish and be damned”, with judges, rather than newspaper editors, having the right, as a matter of course, to scrutinise newspaper copy before it is published. It couldn’t happen here, surely?

Perhaps such a development is unlikely, but the recent experience of the British professions shows that regulation can creep up so insidiously that before anyone has had time to think about it, it’s ubiquitous. Today, as Spada’s report British Professions Today: the State of the Sector, reveals, “regulated self-regulation” is the norm. The paradigm of professional self-regulation may have been called into question – by Thatcher and, more recently, the Office of Fair Trading’s 2001 report, Competition in the Professions – but in its stead we now find government-imposed new regulatory models of “front-line regulators”. Bodies such as the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and the Legal Services Board (LSB) answer not to their professions but to government.

As Spada’s White Paper explains, the legal profession, more than any other, has seen huge changes wrought by the changing regulatory landscape. The Clementi Review of 2004 began the process, identifying a number of flaws in the system, not least (and anathema to lawyers d’un certain age) an insufficient regard to consumers. There are still, today, solicitors who labour under the misapprehension that clients are privileged to be able to consult them, but the implementation of the Legal Services Act 2007 is intended to bring about change in both practice and perception. It created the LSB, and in its wake the Law Society and the Bar Council ring-fenced their regulatory and representative functions.

But still there is disquiet. Is there now a blurring of regulatory function which is confusing to the consumer? Are resources scattered and inappropriately applied? Are consumer interests adequately protected?

The questions raised in the legal profession’s regulatory development are applicable to all the professions. There is a danger that what Colin Scott, in Review of Regulating Law: a clash of mentalities in Risk and Regulation, calls “meta-regulation” may tend to too much sound and fury, signifying not so much nothing, but that the right balance has yet to be achieved.

Image courtesy of ḃĭțʑḯ

‘ on Flickr.

Professionals Under Attack

May 22, 2009

Spada’s White Paper, British Professions Today: the State of the Sector, doesn’t shy away from an uncomfortable truth about the professions in contemporary society: they are criticised now more than ever. George Bernard Shaw’s acidic description of the professions as “conspiracies against the laity” seems to be the default position of anyone not working within the professions, especially, it seems, those in the Fourth Estate. There is a curious irony here, in that journalists are doubtless within the professional class and yet seem to hover between conduct which would horrify the traditional professional, while at the same time feeling justified in condemning those professionals not working in journalism. But be that as it may, why has public confidence in the professions declined?

Spada’s research suggests that one factor is the transition from an industrial society to a knowledge-based society, consequential within which is a diminishing deference to authority, but also factors heavily into the mix the influence of the Thatcher years. “Thatcher’s governments were devastating for the professions – the first two terms for the public sector professions, eg medicine and teaching, and the third term for the legal profession in particular,” says the White Paper, citing Michael Burrage, of the London School of Economics, interviewed by Spada for British Professions Today. For Professor Burrage, Lady Thatcher’s crusade against professional self-regulation and her later cuts in funding for public sector professions proved that despite being Conservative in name, “her political programmes were some of the most radical the country has ever seen.” The bad news, for the professions, is summed up by Lord Mandelson in a 2002 interview with The Times: “We are all Thatcherites now.” In other words, what Thatcher started, New Labour governments have continued.

Nevertheless, the British professions retain a formidable legacy. But in light of the continuing threats posed by the evolution of consumerist values, instant gratification, declining client loyalty, increasing media scrutiny and ever greater red tape restrictions, it shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Image courtesy of Katerina 2353.

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