Bazley calls for end to 'car-boot lawyers'

Dame Margaret Bazley says that lawyer grouping is the best way to facilitate transparency and quality control. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Sole practitioner lawyers who make their money off high volume but low level criminal cases would be eradicated under Dame Margaret Bazley's vision of a restructured legal aid system.

Lawyers are currently able to act alone and rack up bills for each client.

But Dame Margaret wants lawyers to group together and be bulk funded, with senior barristers responsible for the contract.

She said these groups would be set up like legal chambers and centred on various courts, with the benefit being better accountability, quality control and mentoring.

She praised the work of the Public Defence Service, but did not want to rapidly expand it which would have effectively created another bureaucratic institution.

She was a great supporter of private sector competition, and believed the mixed model of bulk-funded groups and Public Defence Service would work well.

She said the Public Defence Service would be used in the major cities, but was also required in smaller centres like Palmerston North, where quality problems were particularly bad.

Dame Margaret said there was still a place for senior lawyers to act as sole practitioners, defending serious and complicated cases and give them a higher rate than in the current legal aid system.

She said an accreditation system needed to be set up immediately to ensure incompetent and corrupt lawyers were excluded from the system.

Being part of a group of lawyers would be a requirement for accreditation for all but the designated group of senior lawyers. Accreditation would also require lawyers to operate from an office to stop "car boot lawyers".

She said there also needed to be an improved mechanism for complaints.

She said the Legal Services Agency, the Crown entity which funds legal aid, needed to be shut down and its functions taken over by the Ministry of Justice, where it was responsible to a Government Minister.

It would need to improve monitoring to stop rorting of the system, and set up a team that investigated suspect lawyers and could impose sanctions such as suspension or supervision.

She said the Ministry and the Law Society needed to work together to improve standards. If the Law Society could not improve standards within three years, she said the Government should take over the regulation of lawyers.

A public servant would also take over the cost management of complicated cases where costs were hard to control, allowing lawyers to focus on the cases.

People who chose their own lawyer should be put under greater scrutiny to make sure there was no rorting of the system.

She said community law centres needed to improve links with social services if they wanted to continue to get funding.

TREATY CLAIMANTS DOUBLE-DIPPING

Treaty of Waitangi claimants could be double or even triple-dipping into various pots of money for the same legal action.

Dame Margaret Bazley said the Government urgently needed to investigate if the $12 million in legal aid used for Treaty of Waitangi work last year had gone towards claims that were also getting funding from other parts of the public purse.

Dame Margaret said she was concerned that some claimants "were having a go at legal aid to do the same thing that has already been claimed for earlier".

Her review of legal aid found "all is not well" with its use in Treaty claims.

As well as legal aid, claimants can access millions of dollars through the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown Forestry Rental Trust.

Dame Margaret said that the Government needed to make sure therewas "no possibility of double-dippingor triple-dipping" by claimants orlawyers.

The ballooning legal aid bill is partly attributed to a "bulge" in Treaty of Waitangi claims.