Three hundred Irish solicitors will gather today in Florence, Italy, for the opening of their annual conference. The theme of the three-day meeting will be what the future holds for the legal profession as it goes into the next millennium.
The keynote speaker will be a former Attorney General, Mr Dermot Gleeson SC, who will talk on "Litigation in the Future".
Other speakers will cover subjects such as information technology and the law and how lawyers will be affected by new technology; the European perspective; and aspects of the taxation of costs.
The director-general of the Law Society, Mr Ken Murphy, said the main theme of the conference would be how lawyers were preparing for the future and how to meet ever-increasing client demands.