Rules for lawyers 'must be upgraded'

by TREVOR YEARWOOD

APPOINTING AN OMBUDSMAN for the legal profession would help,but Barbados also needsto upgrade rules on how lawyers may conduct business.

These are the viewsof Jacqueline Devonish,a London-based lawyer with Barbadian roots.

On a just-ended visitto Barbados, she toldthe DAILY NATION that the Legal Profession Act 1978 needed an upgradeto bring it in line with developments that affected professionalism and public confidence.

Her comments were triggered by a May NATION article in which former ombudsman Carl Ince said he wanted to see such an investigator appointed to handle complaints againstthis country's lawyers.

"I think that the ombudsman could potentially be someone from another profession overseeing the whole legal profession," said Devonish, whose background includes 18 years in private practice and chairmanship of the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT).

"I think that would be the useful thing to do because they don't need to know the law. All they need to do . . . . is to understand the procedure because they would be looking to see whetherthe Bar Association is following their own procedures and dealing with complaints efficiently and in a timely manner."

She recommended changes to the local legislation to improve the complaints procedures against lawyers, to deal with overall monitoringof the profession and to provide "a bit more detail" of accounting procedures regarding the handlingof clients' funds.

In addition to a support system, Britain had its own system of routinely monitoring the legal profession, Devonish pointed out.

"You don't have any monitoring units at all," she added. "That's a layer of money that needs to be found from somewhere."

Devonish wants to see an improvement in the public trust in the profession.

"This can be achieved by transparent enforcement of the existing rules, subject to review, to bring the 1978 rules up to date," she said.

"More emphasis on public accountability can be achieved by involving some highly intellectual non-lawyers in the process who can represent the views of the public.

"Hearings and outcomes in the UK are public and this is a great deterrent to errant lawyers. The public can therefore see justice being done.

"If after going through the stages of a complaint, the complainant is still unhappy, then an independent ombudsman could be asked to review the process and make recommendations to the Bar Association. These findings should be published."

She said anything which currently appeared as a barrier to justice should be reviewed, "such as the need for complex affidavits and court action" at an early stage in the complaints process.

"It must be worth considering a review of the general practising requirements if these could better protectthe public against unscrupulous lawyers,"she added.

"Perhaps the annual review of Practising Certificates can be subject to the satisfactory completion of Continual Professional Development over the year, the filing of compliant annual client accounting records and a certificate of Professional Indemnity Insurance (to cover negligence by attorneys)."

She explained that this would afford financial protection to the publicin the event of errors. Instances of fraud would be dealt with by the Compensation Fund, according to the lawyer.

Devonish called for the process of handling complaints to be reviewed "from the bottom up", beginning in the attorney's office where the initial complaint should be made by the client.

"There must be a clear written complaints procedure about which the client is informed at the outset," she said.

"This sets a level of expectation on both sides and should reduce instances of misunderstanding, which inevitably lead to complaints being made."

If a complaint remained unresolved, the client must know who to turn to next and what to expect from that service, she said.

"It may be time to consider an independent method by which the complaint can be considered before the Bar Association arrives at the point at which a lawyer is referred to the disciplinary process," she said.

"This independent group could be required to scrutinise the legal practice and ethics rules. This body could also be used to monitor compliance generally by undertaking monitoring of visits to attorneys' practices and to provide guidance on compliance to the profession.

"Only after this basic investigation should steps be taken to place the matter within the formal legal framework."

The lawyer's parents, Roosevelt and Cleopatra Devonish, are Barbadians. She travels to Barbados every year, usually during the Crop-Over Festival.

She said she wanted to help the local legal profession in any way she could. (TY)