As a prac­tis­ing so­lic­i­tor and con­veyancer and an at­tor­ney-at-law prac­tis­ing in this ju­ris­dic­tion for more than 50 years I am shocked to hear the rev­e­la­tion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al about fraud­u­lent deeds be­ing rife in this coun­try and worst of all, he is tar­get­ing at­tor­ney as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for this. I am shocked and flab­ber­gast­ed be­cause this can­not be true.

I would like him to re­veal for the sake of the pub­lic and the le­gal pro­fes­sion the ev­i­dence he has to sup­port such a wild ac­cu­sa­tion against lawyers in gen­er­al.

There is ab­solute­ly no rea­son why any lawyer would ex­e­cute a deed, pay the stamp du­ty and hold it for any amount of years in his draw­er and not reg­is­ter it un­less the client is le­git­i­mate­ly ow­ing him fees and/or dis­burse­ments.

I am cer­tain­ly not aware of any such prac­tice by lawyers who for no rea­son would not reg­is­ter a deed if he is paid to do so. Of course, there might be in­stances of un­pro­fes­sion­al con­duct but such cas­es are the ex­cep­tion and rare and are dealt with with­in the pro­fes­sion.

Does the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al think that clients will pay fees and stamp du­ty and oth­er ex­pens­es and not re­quire the at­tor­ney to give them a prop­er­ly reg­is­tered deed?

Why does he un­der­es­ti­mate the in­tel­li­gence of the clients? Does he not know that even the poor old clients of­ten have ed­u­cat­ed chil­dren or rel­a­tives or friends with whom they dis­cuss their le­gal busi­ness and they are guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly?

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s com­ments are slan­der­ous and cal­cu­lat­ed to bring lawyers in­to dis­re­pute. As the head of the Bar he should up­hold the ethics of the Ho­n­ourable pro­fes­sion and if he has a com­plaint against an at­tor­ney he should take it to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion or call in the po­lice. He is ab­solute­ly out of place to come out on tele­vi­sion at news time to look like a hero at­tack­ing mem­bers of the le­gal pro­fes­sion. I am sure all lawyers would feel of­fend­ed by his state­ments.

He should with­draw his bold ac­cu­sa­tions and apol­o­gise to the le­gal pro­fes­sion.

Ramesh Per­sad-Ma­haraj

Val­sayn

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