Dame Margaret Bazley said a small group of lawyers had been abusing the system. File photo / Mark Mitchell

Dame Margaret Bazley said a small group of lawyers had been abusing the system. File photo / Mark Mitchell

A damning review of legal aid says a sea change is needed to fix a system undermined by incompetent, unscrupulous and sometimes corrupt lawyers looking after their own interests.

The Legal Aid Review report released this morning recommended the Legal Services Agency, which administers the aid, lose its independent status and be folded into the Justice Ministry.

It said administrative costs were out of control and raised serious concerns about how the agency operated which had opened the system up to abuse by bad lawyers.

Legal Aid helps those who cannot pay for their court defence, so their financial circumstances do not deprive them of a fair hearing.

Dame Margaret Bazley headed the review and pulled no punches in the report.

"There is a small but significant group of lawyers, and some defendants, who are abusing the system to the detriment of clients, the legal aid system, the courts and the taxpayer," she said.

"While there are very good lawyers in the legal aid system, there is also a small but significant proportion of very bad lawyers who are bringing themselves and their profession into disrepute."

The situation could not be allowed to continue.

"The damage that incompetent and unscrupulous lawyers can inflict on their unsuspecting clients - and the potential to destabilise the court system, with resulting wasted expenditure of public money - is simply too great."

The report said the ties holding lawyers together as a profession were breaking down, with some lawyers operating as businesses without professional standards, and the legal aid system had played a role in that.

Poor practices included:

* lawyers making sentencing submissions without having read the pre-sentence report;

* lawyers ignorant of legal principles and not realising their own ignorance;

* lawyers failing to turn up to court;

* "car boot lawyers" using a District Court law library phone as their office number and using interviewing rooms as their offices;