Refuting claims that it has been lax in taking disciplinary action against errant lawyers, the Bar Council has reiterated its commitment towards achieving a 'zero case' target of cases involving dishonest members.

The Council had been taken to task earlier this month by Consumers Association of Penang president SM Mohd Idris who chided the council for being lackadaisical with regards to complaints by members of the public against delinquent lawyers.

Quoting a report published on Sept 1 in the New Straits Times under the heading ' RM44m claims against dishonest lawyers ', Mohd Idris had posed the question of whether the deteriorating economy and lawyer dishonesty were correlated.

Bar Council chairperson Kuthubul Zaman Bukhari today denied the allegation and reiterated the council's commitment towards "... enforcing a high standard of integrity and professionalism among Malaysian lawyers."

He said the said NST article did not clarify whether the claims referred to were resolved or pending.

"It must also not be overlooked that claims against lawyers under the professional indemnity scheme are wide-ranging and most of them do not relate to dishonesty," he said in a statement.

"The scheme, established by the council, is a compulsory insurance scheme aimed at protecting clients of lawyers in numerous ways and is not only limited to cases involving dishonesty."

'Out of context'

The NST report, quoting vice-chairperson Yeo Yang Poh, had cited the Council's Compensation Fund and the professional indemnity scheme and said that the incidence of lawyer dishonesty between 1994 and 2003 'reflected the country's economic performance'.

The report stated that during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis alone, claims under both had totalled RM16 million, or one-third of total claims for dishonesty since 1994.

Yeo was quoted as saying that the incidence of lawyer dishonesty had stabilised in recent years due to the country's strong economic performance.

Attempting to clarify the report, Kuthubul said Yeo's comments had been in response to specific questions and had not been made in the context of the statistics that were subsequently published.

"It was pointed out that the number of lawyers who were found to have committed dishonest acts are few, given that we have 12,000 members in the country. At the same time it was stressed that, despite the small proportion, such cases are always taken very seriously by the council, and that our target is zero cases.'

Kuthubul said he would like to assure CAP and the public that the Council would continue to treat complaints against lawyers in 'a serious and professional manner' adding that the council's Disciplinary Board, which handled all complaints against lawyers, was headed by a retired High Court judge.

'Fair representation'

"The most recent statistics as at Aug 31 showed that the Board has disposed of 81.4 percent of the complaints lodged over the past 21 years," he said.

"Given that in every profession there are practitioners who fall short of the required standard of conduct, then the issue here concerns the establishment of the best possible mechanism to minimise and deal with breaches."

If found guilty of dishonesty, a lawyer can be suspended from practice under Section 94(4) of the Legal Profession Act 1976, and eventually struck off the roll.

"The process may be painstaking but this is inevitable if all parties are to be allowed a fair representation of their case and natural justice is to prevail," Kuthubul's statement concluded.

Malaysiakini 's attempts to contact Kuthubul today were unsuccessful and the number of lawyers who have had action taken against them for dishonest practises by the Disciplinary Board remains unclear.

CAP, in its statement last week, had also questioned the Council's reluctance to initiate disciplinary proceeding against its members preferring instead to arbitrate disputes until a settlement was reached between the lawyer and complainant.