Crackdown against fake lawyers launched

District bar association president vows to cleanse lawyers’ body of ghost members

ISLAMABAD:

Shocking as it may seem but it is a fact that ‘some coats are not black enough’ to represent litigants at courts.

In the latest development, authorities at the Islamabad District Bar Association (IDBA) have launched a crackdown on fake lawyers and touts who hang around the court premises looking to cheat and make quick money.



Similarly, they have also decided to start verification of lawyers’ degrees in order to eliminate the “black sheep” among them.

“What can be worse than someone committing fraud and forgery in the name of law,” said the IDBA president, Syed Mohammad Tayyab. “Those who are earning bad name will be eliminated,” he vowed.

Tayyab said that dozens of people, including women, were involved in impersonation acts and busy cheating litigants through the uniforms. “Several cases of impersonation and cheating have been detected,” he said while elaborating why the crackdown started.

Recently, two fake women lawyers were identified and the police managed to arrest one of them from the F-8 courthouse. Tayyab said that the women dressed as lawyers were accused of collecting money from litigants for pleading their cases.

“Apart from the men, a number of fake women lawyers are operating as an organised group at the district courts,” he revealed, adding that no one would be allowed to cheat public at large and earn a bad name for the lawyers’ community.

On the subject of degrees verification, the bar president said that he has received information about bogus degrees and lawyers practicing without having degrees at all. In this regard, he said, degrees of all the IDBA members would be verified through the relevant forum. “To purge the bar from the lawyers who have no license and are not members is the top priority,” he said. “They will be filtered out.”

The IDBA currently has 3,600 eligible voters and the number of non-voters is around 500. Tayyab said that record is available with the bar association and the verification process would start ‘very soon’.



He said that degrees of fresh lawyers are first verified and then they are allowed to practice under the bar rules and regulations. He, however, refrained himself from commenting how the fake lawyers were initially enrolled.

Tayyab mentioned the recent inauguration of computerisation of the records and establishment of information desk at the district courts as a step in the right direction as it would help litigants to obtain information about their cases in no time.

While highlighting issues, he said that there was no judicial complex at the federal capital and the shifting of courts from F-8 market to the high court building was among top priorities. In 2007, he said, 40 kanals of land was allocated for district courts and the lawyers’ chamber at the premises where the Islamabad High Court is currently functioning but the project could not be materialised owing to the shortage of funds.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st,  2016.