It is difficult not to have a lawyer and it is almost a sure bet that a defendant in court will not win without one. This is serious and should be a focus of the judicial and the legislative process.
People borrow money and get into serious debt to pay lawyers, some who charge exorbitant fees that they want to collect before they set foot in the court room ﾗ just in case they lose and then have a hard time collecting.
Family homes are mortgaged when loved ones are in trouble and must have legal representation if ﾗ in some cases they expect to prove their innocence, or, if guilty, to get a lesser sentence.
So when lawyers take people’s money and make very little effort to earn it by way of good representation, that is serious. It should be an offence that is also punishable by the courts. Because it is dangerous when the lawyers accept the clients’ money, offer them hope and then fail to show up in court to give them the representation for which they paid.
In the first order that should be a contempt and the other charges could follow, among which should be “stealing by reason of employment.”
Lawyers should not be allowed to get away with the apparent “slap on the wrist” that it is not a game that they seem to take as a light matter.
Maybe Appeal Court President Dame Joan Sawyer had something in mind Tuesday when she said: “We will not let the machinery of justice grind to a halt because of laziness.”
And that something has to be more than Bar Council president Wayne Munroe’s assertion that it is “unacceptable behaviour” to be dealt with by the ethics committee of the legal profession. Those people who have scrounged and gone into hock to pay lawyers’ fees must be given to believe that they will be justly served for the money that they paid.
That is only fair.
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
