GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) Lynette See­baran-Suite, SC, is call­ing for more strin­gent mea­sures to be put in place to deal with at­tor­neys sus­pect­ed of wrong­do­ing.

See­baran-Suite, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, is rec­om­mend­ing that lawyers who are sus­pect­ed of “egre­gious of­fences” be tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed from prac­tice un­til their mat­ters are de­ter­mined and con­clud­ed.

“If the al­leged of­fence is se­ri­ous enough, the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee should be able to sus­pend them (lawyers sus­pect­ed of se­ri­ous wrong­do­ing) from prac­tis­ing un­til their dis­ci­pli­nary tri­al has been com­plet­ed,” she ex­plained, stat­ing that this was her per­son­al opin­ion and not that of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

See­baran-Suite fur­ther said that the pow­er of the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee to sus­pend such at­tor­neys be en­shrined in leg­is­la­tion. Cur­rent­ly, if a com­plaint is made against an at­tor­ney, this may take a while be­fore the mat­ter comes to com­ple­tion, See­baran-Suite said, not­ing that in the mean­time, such lawyers can con­tin­ue to prac­tice even while their mat­ter is on­go­ing.

She said sus­pen­sion should ap­ply when there are se­ri­ous com­plaints, in­clud­ing gross mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of mon­ey.

“There are a mi­nor­i­ty of cas­es in which the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee might want to ex­er­cise dis­cre­tion to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend an at­tor­ney un­til such time the mat­ter is con­clud­ed,” See­baran-Suite em­pha­sised.

De­liv­er­ing her ad­dress at LATTs’ din­ner and awards cer­e­mo­ny which took place at the Hilton Ho­tel on Fri­day night, See­baran-Suite said the strate­gic plan fo­cus­es on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty of the as­so­ci­a­tion it­self, as well as en­hance­ment of mem­ber­ship ben­e­fits, ac­cess to jus­tice and law re­form is­sues, as well as con­tin­u­ous pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has com­mit­ted to a work­ing group to ad­dress long need­ed amend­ments to our act which marks its 37th an­niver­sary this year, in­clud­ing im­prov­ing our dis­abil­i­ty func­tion, ad­her­ence to the treaty, es­tab­lish­ing le­gal ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean and re­liev­ing the reg­istries of the func­tion of col­lect­ing our sub­scrip­tions,” she added.

Dur­ing the awards cer­e­mo­ny sev­er­al es­teemed at­tor­neys who have been in prac­tice for 50 years were ho­n­oured in­clud­ing Stephanie Daly, SC, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, Robin Mon­tano, El Farouk Ho­sein, Philip Sealy.

Giv­ing re­marks on be­half of the awardees, Mar­tineau had some ad­vice for younger mem­bers of the pro­fes­sion.

“I would rec­om­mend that you read the au­to­bi­ogra­phies of Chief Jus­tice Michael de la Bastide. He is more than that be­cause there he speaks of a num­ber of le­gal ex­pe­ri­ences,” he sug­gest­ed.

This was the first Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s din­ner af­ter a hia­tus of three years fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in March 2020.