In 1997, a senior legal aid lawyer was paid between $150 and $180 an hour, compared to a Crown counsel rate of $183. In 1999, the senior lawyer rate dropped to between $130 and $160. Since then, Crown counsel payments have risen to $216... David Ruth, a member of Christchurch criminal lawyer lobby group Just Cause, said equality of legal representation for all was starting to become an issue. Unless legal aid rates were adjusted, he feared many senior criminal defence lawyers would go elsewhere, taking their experience with them...Do you really think firms like Deborah Manning's McLeod & Associates would forego further opportunities to pull down $2 million from the taxpayers, as they have done already for the Ahmed Zaoui case? Who are they kidding. Here's three possible solutions to Mr Ruth's please: One is to drop the rate for Crown counsels as well; another is to nationalise all the bloody lawyers; the third is one proposed by H.L. Mencken that I suggested a few weeks back to the Ass Editor of the Law Society journal, who was panhandling politicians in a similar manner before the election. Oddly enough, I never heard back from the chap.
Categories: Law, NZ_Politics, Snouts_in_the_Trough
3 comments:
Let's not forget the option of hanging all the lawyers ;-)
Oswald, that ~is~ option three, although as proposed by Mencken it was far more lyrically voiced. Follow the link and see for yourself. :-)
Doh!-I missed the link.
A widely held sentiment and one that has been around for a while!
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