Lawyers’ Clients

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 441, 24 August 1928, Page 8

Lawyers’ Clients

SCHEME OF PROTECTION

DROTECTION against loss suffered through the acts ot' dishonest lawyers will be given clients if the New Zealand Law Society’s guarantee sehetne is approved by Parliament. Rigid supervision and wide powers of control will be given the society if the Bill is enacted. Many in the profession believe that the recent crop of misappropriations ! are but the fruits of the relaxing, made over a quarter of a century ago, of the conditions governing entry into the law.

The legal profession has been clouded by a certain degree of disrepute during the past few years through the misdemeanours of some of its members, and in the aggregate many thousands of pounds have gone astray. So heavy have been the individual losses of clients —-£10,000 here and £B,OOO there—and so disturbed became the traditions of an honoured profession, that legal men themselves perceived the desirability of protecting the people against their dishonest fellows. Nearly a year ago, therefore, a move toward the establishment of a security scheme was instituted.

The establishment of a fund for reimbursement of misled clients is one of the fundamental essentials of the scheme. It was at first proposed that a flat levy of £lO be made upon solicitors throughout the Dominion, the society having the power to make further calls of a similar amount — with a limit of £lO0 —if the first levy did not meet contingencies. An insurance project was also mooted, and another suggestion arose outside the profession that a fund should be given into the hands of the Public Trustee for administration. TO RESTORE CONFIDENCE Nothing definite toward financing the security proposal is promised by the legislation, however, the society merely undertaking to set up some method of protection and administer it, and to tighten up the prescribed conduct of trust accounts, as well as to investigate the affairs and the accounts of any solicitor whom the council of the society considers to be worthy of such searching attention. There is a measure of justice in the plaint of legal authorities that greater prominence is given defaulting solicitors than to dishonest businessmen in any other category, largely on account of the high repute which the profession has enjoyed for many centuries; but it is generally conceded that the Law Society is undertaking a just liability in righting public wrongs at its own expense. As the law stands at the moment, there is no redress for the victim of misapplied trust funds, except a general call upon personal estate; and in the light of several serious instances of missing money, even the most trusting members of the community have been a little unnerved at the prospect of placing their surplus cash into the hands of solicitors for keeping and investment. SINS OF THE PAST The belief is expressed seriously by some men at the Bar that the disturbing tendency toward criminal misappropriations, which has been recorded in New Zealand recently, is the indirect outcome of a whirlwind rush for the law which followed the introduction, over 25 years ago, of easier entrance qualifications. At the end of 1927 there were 1,735 practitioners—barristers and solicitors employed by State and private firms—in the Dominion, and it is suggested that this number embraces very many who were totally unfitted to practise. The necessity for practical experience as a qualifying factor in a law examination wah swept aside when a New Zealand Parliament of long ago, with democratic gesture, dismissed also the necessity for premiums for articled clerks. This relaxation is now blamed for much of to-day’s distress.

The difficulty in dealing with dishonesty is always an acute one, ,for the dishonest man is usually cunning, and his efforts to avoid his obligations are covered by a cloak of seeming integrity. But even a dishonest person is persuaded to think twice if detection is brought so close that the sword of retribution hangs perpetually. above his head. Virtually this would be the effect of the Law Society’s scheme, which is encompassed by the Law Practitioners’ Amendment Bill, now before the Upper House of Parliament. The honest practitioner would be smirched by no stigma whatever, while on the other hand, strict supervision and rigid control would be exercised upon the conduct of the Bar, and any suspicion of malpractice would be immediately investigated by the society’s auditor.