The real personal income is a lot less than the gross figures you see. You appear to have mistaken turnover for profit.

All of those lawyers, like most legal aid lawyers, work incredibly hard in a very stressful job. GPT is correct when he says the rates are very low- they are generally one third those of private work.

To those that still wait for accountability hopefully it is on its way.

The truth is always in the evidence, regardless of how one wants to frame the view.

It is only a matter of looking at the evidence.

Hopefully enough people will look through the wall of silence this time and see the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

But there are obviously still a fair few crumbs and bones lying around for those with the nose to smell them out – a roll call of payments by the LSA to the top dogs from your neck of the woods in the year July 08 to June 09 shows the cupboards can’t be bare just yet-

A N GARRETT – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $251,402.97
A S GREIG – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $184,935.95
ANGELA GRANT – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $145,832.07
BRIDGET N AYREY CHRISTCHURCH $147,448.03
C M RUANE – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $111,482.89
CHERRY KANNANGARA CHRISTCHURCH $364,885.56
DAVID BUNCE CHRISTCHURCH $285,961.13
DAVID RUTH – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $145,426.00
DENISE JOHNSTON – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $112,641.04
ELIZABETH BULGER – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $153,881.93
G A HAY CHRISTCHURCH $144,510.11
G LASCELLES CHRISTCHURCH $123,216.07
JONATHAN EATON CHRISTCHURCH $164,551.59
K H COOK – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $199,666.97
KATHRYN VESTY – BARRISTER & SOLICITOR CHRISTCHURCH $176,954.05
LEE LEE HEAH – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $155,208.99
MARGARET SEWELL – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $254,877.58
MARK CALLAGHAN – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $305,884.50
MICHAEL STARLING – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $271,133.01
MOANA M COLE – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $113,043.52
P H B HALL – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $321,683.81
P J BUTLER – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $100,501.99
PHILLIP N ALLAN – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $147,621.22
RUPERT GLOVER – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $189,931.71
SERINA BAILEY – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $293,158.38
STEPHEN HEMBROW – BARRISTER CHRISTCHURCH $143,683.17
T STEVENS CHRISTCHURCH $103,818.82

“I am rather dismayed how Dame Margaret was able to form the 200 corrupt lawyer conclusion from purely anecdotal evidence and hearsay.”

How much of this information comes from the court staff – and if considerable what does it say about the size of the overall problem in relation to present strike action where court staff are paid 6.3% less by average than other PSA employees?

If it is ‘white collar’ and wrong information, then this source of information must have need of remedy as much as the substantive inquiry is justified requiring investigation.

tvb – you are quite right. In fact I have a policy of never seeing a potential criminal client until I have disclosure. Used to work well until the new Act. Sigh.

It shows a fundamental mis-understanding (is that a word) of what a duty solicitor actually does.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ckpt/2009/11/27/law_society_reaction_to_dame_margarets_report

For example, here is correspondence started with a letter from me to John Marshall and a reply from the Law Society that erodes any possible confidence I have in the Standards Committee dealing with old problems so protecting any existing corruption in their fold:

Tena koe Mary Wilson,

in the interview you held with John Marshall, Mr Marshall defended the integrity of the Law Society. Yet in this reply to my correspondence, I believe I legitimately contest that confidence.

I note I am in advanced court proceedings against Radio New Zealand National, where a Family Court lawyer appears robustly protected to engage invited opinions that are gender discriminatory where the jurisdiction of the Family Court is defended by the Ministry of Justice as being gender neutral.

How does Checkpoint respond to this matter where a controversy is established for an interview where an invited guest can be fairly challenged for making a claim that is contestable and then on test be found to neglect the point of controversy for which they were formally invited onto the radio programme to defend?

I await your reply with interest.

Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton
LAOS New Zealand

____________________________________________

Thank you for your reply Malcolm but you have completely dismissed and abrogated the point of my email.

The interview held between Mary Wilson and John Marshall assured confidence in a robust Standards Committee. What I am saying to you is this is simply not true and the evidence is accessible for anyone to view if those who would take a responsibility so to do would investigate. Surely under the principle of ‘self regulation’ the first body I should approach would be the Law Society.

I am advising you that the LCRO modified a decision of the committee.

1. The Committee met and processed the complaint on the same day they received it, returning a rejection at the same time as issuing an inquiry of the lawyer under complaint.

2. The Committee called it a ‘Fee Complaint’ where quite clearly it was a “Conduct Complaint’.

3. The Committee did not read the complaint and returned it to the Family Court where it was about an action prior to the Family Court being used.

4. The Committee stated that it sent me the letter from the lawyer but it never did and this letter only emerged after significant frustration and inquiry on my part because it was ‘critical evidence’ for the substantive matter.

How is your answer to me not an exact repeat of what the Committee did where you fail to recognise the nature of my inquiry? It has ‘nothing to do with the substantive matter’. It has ‘everything to do with the Committee’s integrity’. Your reply is just as shocking to me as when I received the original reply from the Committee. You simply have ‘no idea’ what I wrote or you are otherwise obfuscating the Law Society’s responsibility.

My personal claim against the Committee and why they acted in this way was because they realised that I was the principal behind the complaint. I say this because they did the same make over job on another complaint I processed on a lawyer appointed to assist the Court. He stole evidence. The Lay Observer, in I presume the last decision before the Lawyers And Conveyancers Act 2006, agreed that if this occurred it would be of significant concern for the party that I advocated on behalf of. Well it was of significant concern. But nothing happened and B**** A**** not only got protected by your standards committee but also the Court.

Please do not patronise me with your answers. You have every responsibility to inquire on the two matters I have raised.

Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton
LAOS New Zealand

_________________________________________

Hello Mr Easton,

The Standards Committee has given it’s decision in this matter. The decision was reviewed by the Lawyers Complaints Review Office. That process is a statutory process between the parties and it is not appropriate for the Society to comment on the merits of the case.

Malcolm Ellis
Complaints Service
New Zealand Law Society

________________________________

Tena koe John Marshall,

(President Law Society)

I refer to your interview with Mary Wilson on Checkpoint RNZ National on Friday 27 November.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ckpt/2009/11/27/law_society_reaction_to_dame_margarets_report

I wish to draw your attention to a most serious problem that occurred with your Manawatu Standards Committee from the very first Legal Complaints Review Officer mediation. The faulted standard of the committee was recognised by the Officer and the decision made by the committee modified. I am presently struggling with the High Court at Palmerston North registrar attempting to get these matters before the Court. The file is entitled Eason v Family Court.

Yet there was no redress or any investigation as to the nature of the committee’s behaviour and inadequacy when processing the complaint. They seriously abrogated natural justice and have individually shamed the function of New Zealand’s legal self regulation and its monitoring. I will make these facts available on your return inquiry.

The Law Society, nor the Ministry of Justice can say they are not aware of what I am talking about. Bronwyn Jones can advise you. The various administrations including the media are more conveniently prepared to successfully ignore the information I have presented and prosecuted. The serious problems that exist in family law in the Manawatu don’t seem to matter to its administrators.

Without my complaints fully and responsibly investigated cleaning out the shockingly poor behaviours of family law administrators the damage being done to the father (one of an uncountable number) in question and his son is reprehensible and disgraceful.

I do not have time for the moment to compile my complaint into a greater or more understandable form but advise that you should review the papers relative to the LCRO 01/08 decision of L v D, and then get back to me.

Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton
LAOS New Zealand

__________________________________________

If there was proper accountability then there would be less crime. Accountability would raise the standards and lawyers would feel more confident dealing with each other and get greater respect from the public.

What is the level of accountability? I hear some talk that perhaps the 200 dishonest lawyers should be dismissed for stealing from the state. Perhaps it is a political move to lower the cost of legal aid but of cause the vulnerability had to be there first to be use.

As an aside on wasting resources I had a 17 year old who was charged with stealing $2 from his sister and had spent a night in the cells. Ridiculous.

I’ll see you that (since we seem to be in a betting mood today ) and raise you a 12 year old arrested and charged for receiving (yes, not stealing, but receiving) a chocolate “Freddo frog” worth 70 cents.

The WA Police ran a concerted PR effort, aided of course by the media, to the effect that this was “the tip of the iceberg”. Of course no journo thought to ask that, if that was the most serious charge, what were the rest of his “crimes”? Jaywalking? Littering?

Eventually a judge hauled them into line and they were even forced to pay costs of $1,000 – but of course they (and their friends in the media) were muttering about “lawless youth” for days afterward.

GPT1, FES and any other lawyers reading this:

Please don’t abandon legal aid work. I’d always had some appreciation of NZ legal aid lawyers’ efforts but it wasn’t till I came to Australia that I completely realised the calibre of lawyers NZ is fortunate to have still accepting legal aid work.

Take my own case. Having been dragged across 4 time zones and kept awake all night due to police refusing to turn off the light, a man in a suit strides into my cell, looks me up and down and says, with venom fair dripping from his voice, “People like you can expect to get seven years!”. “Are you the prosecutor?” I asked. “The officer in charge of the inquiry?” “No, I’m your lawyer,” he said in a tone I reserve for when I’ve stepped in something.

He was later reprimanded by a judge (in another case – I eventually managed to sack him) for having come to court “with your mind made up that your client is guilty, and determined to assist the prosecutor to demonstrate it”.

I’m sure some of the public may not hold you in high regard. Aside from sheer ignorance, the one uniting factor amongst them would be that they’ve never been sucked into the vortex of the “justice” system. There are, however, a large but generally silent group who know precisely what it is you do and why it is you do it, and that any words of thanks, awards or even cash you could be offered still wouldn’t come close to acknowledging your value.

Well thought out and reasoned arguments with solid clear writing. Almost like a brief.

XChequer

P.S Have you considered a career in law at all? You would be good.

The author of the report proves the axiom that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

And people complain about lawyers gaming the system!

The advantage for the government in having duty solicitors available early is that the administrative body for legal aid does not then have to make an assignment, thus saving on admin costs. Plus duty solicitors are paid at a lower rate than assigned work.

But the clients still cannot seem to retain paperwork longer than a few minutes. The Police love it, because they now make initial disclosure to the client rather than the lawyer, and when the lawyer says to the officer in charge that they have not got disclosure for whatever reason the police can refuse to provide new copies. Some lawyers have had to revert to asking the judges to order the police to provide the disclosure as a result.

Kiwicraig: well said, mate. Hopefully you can write something about the actual content of the report!

My own dealings with legal aid is that it was very difficult indeed to get paid for far less than the hours I ever worked on any case. How David Bain’s lawyers and Joe Karram ( a mere helper on the case) managed to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars and employ the most expensive experts in the world I would be very interested to discover.

I don’t know any lawyer who deliberately sets out to “rob” legal aid. In fact legal aid services robs the lawyer when it refuses to pay the hours worked. And the lawyer also has to spend ages preparing applications to request them to pay extra and any oversight in applying for variations to the suit on time is met with no payment at all. That is my experience and it does not surprise me that many firms will not deal with clients requiring legal aid. It is an administrative pain in the neck for very little financial reward.

I am surprised to read that lawyers are able to even manipulate the system. In Wellington the agency are very thorough and question any deviation from the standard. It is definitely the lawyer who is exploited when it takes on legal aid clients!

I can’t see what seeing a duty solicitor prior to the hearing date will achieve except becoming a defacto legal aid appointment. And no-one will meet with however they are told to see as there won’t be any form of compulsion.

The only reason people turn up to court when summonsed is that if they don’t they will have a warrant issued and will be arrested if they don’t.

Additionaly when I did duty solicitor work, happily several life times ago, I found that the customers had invariably lost, destroyed, mutilated or forgotten their summons. God knows what they would do to disclosure material they would receive.

Eviscerates. Ouch.

The reality is that Dame Bazley has taken an educated guess based on, seemingly, hearsay that Manakau is poked and assumed that there must be some more rubbish lawyers outside of Manakau (and by definition you would expect that she would be right) and thought somewhere around 200 sounds about right.

The other problem with the media attack and distortions is that the issue becomes about how bad the bad are rather than fixing the system for the majority. In fact it puts all lawyers on the defensive and actually makes it harder to weed out the chaff. Imagine getting shoulder tapped with a “must try harder” now. Bad enough at any time let alone now when it comes with the stigma of corruption.

The report eviscerates the LSA, addresses the problems caused the courts, and also addresses the “small” number of legal aid lawyers who are adding to those much larger systemic problems. The MSM of course jumps on the final, smaller, point – and splashes that everywhere, extrapolating innuendo and supposition – meaning the general public once again are left with little information about the real key issues with legal aid in this country. It seems the media, as much as Power, had made up their mind of what the story would be, prior to reading the report (if any of them actually read it).

What’s worse, is that they’re feeding off each other – I noticed in the NZHerald today it was “200 or more” legal aid lawyers are CORRUPT. Earlier it was up to 200 (and that was a higher-end estimate) were flawed in a number of ways (e.g. incompetent, create issues etc), of which only a small number would actually be ‘CORRUPT’ – but now all those (perhaps over-estimated) numbers are rolled together into CORRUPT, which is of course a far more evocative, headline-grabbing word.

Screw the truth. Screw the real issues. Sigh.