Despite the existence of a Legal Practitioners Committee (LPC) decades have passed without an attorney-at-law being tried in court for misconduct, Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran recently pointed out while noting that this may have resulted in the erosion of public confidence in the system to discipline lawyers.
Ramkarran, a former Speaker of the National Assembly touched on this issue in the June 4 edition of his weekly column “Conversation Tree” which is published in the Sunday Stabroek.
He explained that the LPC is the statutory body which hears complaints against lawyers and comprises 15 lawyers, 12 of whom are appointed by the Chancellor with the remainder being state officials from the Attorney General’s Chambers who are ex-officio members.
He said that where, upon a complaint by a member of the public, a case of misconduct has been established against a lawyer, after a hearing the LPC reports its findings to the judges of the court. It is for the judges of the court, he said, to decide what further steps should be taken, if any.
“While I am aware that the LPC is very active and that there are no shortages of complaints against lawyers, which are in fact dealt with, the fact is that no lawyer has been tried for misconduct by the judges for many decades. This is clearly one of the reasons why the public lacks confidence in the system of disciplining of lawyers,” he said.
According to Ramkarran, the recently appointed Bar Council of the Guyana Bar Association (GBA) needs to advocate for the system of discipline to be transformed.
“The LPC itself, like the Medical Council, should have the power to impose sanctions against lawyers.
There is an existing right of appeal. Such a system would go a far way towards eliminating misconduct by lawyers and in generating the confidence of the public in the legal profession,” he said.
Former GBA head Chris Ram, in a letter published in the May 31 edition of this newspaper, also spoke on this issue and said that the strongest punishment meted out to guilty attorneys was the refund of money given to them by their clients.
In his letter, Ram noted that lawyers are bound by a Code of Conduct under the Legal Practitioners Act, but “many it seems pay little attention to its prescriptions, confident that they will get away with whatever.”
He said, “even when lawyers are found ‘guilty’, the strongest punishment they face is being told to refund the fees or money paid to them by their hapless clients,” adding that in a civilised environment, such action would require publication but in Guyana, there is no more than “whisper among lawyers while the offending lawyer is free to continue the offending practice.”
Ram used the forum to recommend that a retired judge be appointed to head the LPC with the help of capable full-time staff, and for all its findings to be publicised. “The public needs protection from unscrupulous practitioners,” he stressed.
His comments on the LPC were part of a holistic analysis of the current state of the profession. He highlighted the fact that it would appear that lawyers have put their profession into “cold storage”.
In May last year while announcing his decision not to seek reelection, Ram criticized the LPC’s handling of complaints privately.
“The LPC is made up entirely of attorneys and its hearings and decisions are held in private.
“The system clearly works in favour of the attorney against whom the complaint is lodged and who is almost invariably represented by another attorney while the client stands alone. Even members of the LPC complain about this imbalance and the insufficiency of their powers to sanction attorneys,” he had said.
He told Sunday Stabroek on that occasion that his recommendation would be that the LPC should include non-attorneys, that it be provided with resources to investigate complaints and that its findings against attorneys be published so that members of the public can make informed decisions in their choice of attorneys.
The operation of the LPC is governed by the Legal Practioners Act. Article 35 of the Act states, “A client or, by leave of the committee, any other person alleging himself aggrieved by an act of professional misconduct, committed by an attorney-at-law other than the Attorney General or a law officer, may apply to the committee to require the attorney-at-law to answer allegations contained in an affidavit made by a client or other person, and the registrar or any member of the committee may make a like application to the committee in respect of allegations concerning any professional misconduct or any criminal offence as may for the purposes of this section be prescribed by the Chancellor with the approval of the bar associations.”
