By CRISPIN HULL
Lawyers should lift their game and abandon expensive overseas conferences and stop abusing professional privilege, according to the shadow attorney-general, Nicola Roxon.
She said also that barristers’ immunity from being sued for negligence, recently upheld by the High Court, should be abandoned.
She told the inaugural Australian Women Lawyers conference in Sydney yesterday (Friday 29 September) that incidences of “lawyers behaving badly” were not symptomatic of the whole profession but they could not be dismissed as on-offs.
She cited a legal education conference in a US ski resort and a two-day conference in Prato, Italy, on the cost of justice with the conference dinner in a palace.
She cited lawyers’ roles in the $5.3 billion HIH collapse and the concealment of documents in the AWB and tobacco cases and the failure of some barristers to pay tax.
She accused public-sector lawyers of behaving badly in serving their departments and ministers rather than the public through obstruction in freedom-of-information cases, over-vigilant pursuit of welfare and refugee cases and coming up with the Pacific solution.
It did not help that at the head of the legal profession Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was prepared to use people’s fears for political purposes by suggesting the recent Western Australian native title case would prevent access to Perth beaches and parks and by linking David Hicks’s case to the recently drawn out NSW rape cases.
She said that she would defend the courts and not take part in under-mining them if she were Attorney-General.
Ms Roxon said that lawyers behaving badly threatened to undermine the much greater good that the legal profession did. She cited the huge amount of pro bono (free) work done for those who could not afford it. She also cited the good done by legal professional bodies in standing up for human rights. She said the great majority of the profession worked well, but was being let down.
Middle Australia thought of the legal profession as being only for the very rich or very poor; too costly and too riddled with delay.
This threatened confidence in the courts.
“There is a public good in peaceful and just resolution of disputes,” she said.
Ultimately, if people’s views of the legal profession and the legal system did not improve it would undermine the rule of law and threaten “our peaceful, stable and prosperous society”.
She said the immunity for barristers undermined confidence in the system. Its message was: “We have special rules. If you are negligent we will sue you, but if we are negligent you cannot sue us”.
She thought that legislation should be passed to overrule the immunity after debate among the professional bodies.
She called on lawyers to do more pro bono work; do more work with non-government organisations; speak out against abuse of professional privilege and support alternative dispute resolution.