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• Bar forwards cases to police

Dishonest lawyers are not welcome in the legal profession and those who are found to have committed acts of dishonesty must face the full force of the law. The Bar Council thus welcomes the recent move by the police to investigate reports of cheating and criminal breach of trust involving lawyers.

The legal profession, like any other profession or calling suffers its share of dishonest members. However, unlike other professions, lawyers are frequently entrusted with funds from members of the public especially in relation to property transactions and as such lawyers owe a high duty of trust and care to the public.

Most transactions that number many thousand in a year are safely and reliably transacted by honest members of the profession. However, a small, albeit not insignificant number, result in losses to the public either due to negligence or dishonesty. As far as we are concerned, one dishonest lawyer is one too many.

The legal profession has recognized its duty to protect the public interest against such lawyers and has put into place several mechanisms including the following:

Compensation Fund

Every member of the Bar is required to contribute RM100 a year to the Compensation Fund, set up under Section 80 of the Legal Profession Act. The fund is meant to be used to compensate, to some extent, any person who sustains a loss as a consequence of the dishonest act of a lawyer or his employee. From 1978 to 2004 a total of RM9.8 million has been paid out in terms of compensation.

Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII)

The PII Scheme was introduced in 1992. We were the first professional body to initiate such a scheme and till today we remain the only profession in Malaysia in which PII is compulsory.

Under the Legal Profession (Professional Liability) (Insurance) Rules 1992 every advocate and solicitor is required to be insured under the rules and the insurance policy provides indemnity against professional liability including acts of negligence through error and/or omission by lawyers and/or employees of legal firms. Criminal Breach of Trust is covered only to the extent that innocent partners in a firm will be protected.

Intervention

Provisions in the Legal Profession Act allow for the Bar Council to intervene and take over the practice of a firm if there is evidence of dishonesty. An intervention secretariat has been set up for that purpose.

Further it is precisely in the public interest that many of the recent amendments to the Legal Profession Act were passed which streamlines the proceedings before the Disciplinary Board so that cases involving errant lawyers may be dealt with swiftly. There are provisions that have been included for the restitution of monies to a complainant. However, the recent move by the police to commence criminal investigations will be a further step outside our disciplinary regime that will go a long way towards curbing dishonesty.

Integrity is a value cherished by the legal profession as a whole and we are ever mindful that we have to be vigilant against unscrupulous lawyers.

The public must be in no doubt that we have zero tolerance for dishonest lawyers. We will co-operate fully with the police in bringing these lawyers to book.

Dated 28 May 2007

Ambiga Sreenevasan
President
Malaysian Bar

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