THE BARBADOS BAR ASSOCIATION, its reputation dogged by several public complaints of professional misconduct against some of its members, wants changes in the law to effectively deal with the bad apples.
Outgoing president Queen’s Counsel Leslie Haynes says a new Legal Profession Act would enable the association’s disciplinary committee to expeditiously hear matters of alleged wrongdoing and enhance the image of the legal fraternity, which has taken a public bashing over the years.
“Now that the Attorney General [Adriel Brathwaite] has satisfied the interest of the international business community by setting the minimum standards with a new bill [International Corporate and Trust Providers Bill], I hope he would allocate some resources to ensuring the passing of a new Legal Profession Act which the Bar has been calling for over two years.
“The Bar maintains that the ills of the profession can be solved by the passage of a new act which would deal with things like clients’ accounts and new standards in terms of the disciplinary committee,” Haynes told the SUNDAY SUN yesterday.
“Right now, the disciplinary committee is burdened because it needs divisions with more than one committee sitting at the same time and the present legislation which dates back to the [1970s] does not allow for this,” he added.
According to the Bar’s 2010 disciplinary committee report, it is now hearing cases against lawyers for the first half of 2009 which recorded more than 87 complaints.
The backlog includes a further 57 new complaints submitted last year.
“The Bar would welcome the new act that would satisfactorily deal with the number of complaints that we have. The present act does not and never catered for the numbers [complaints] that we now have,” the former president noted.
Haynes, who did not seek re-election at yesterday’s annual general meeting, also called on Government to put a new Land Title Act on the statute books.
“It is nice to know that the Attorney General thought that the bill dealing with the international business community was a matter of some urgency, so too, is the bill dealing with the foreclosure and title to lands.
“It [bill] has been languishing now for about three years and everything else has taken priority but in the meantime the local community who need title deeds to their lands in order to raise money or in order to secure loans are left waiting,” Haynes said.