ISLAMABAD: In line with the directions of the Supreme Court, the Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) has written to all the presidents of bar associations in Punjab, asking them to identify fake and unprofessional lawyers within their ranks, who were bringing a bad name to the legal profession because of their boorish behaviour.

“We have asked all bar associations in the province to submit a comprehensive list within a week,” Punjab Bar Council Executive Committee Chairman Chaudhry Abdus Salam told Dawn.

The purpose behind the exercise is to weed out phony individuals from among lawyers’ ranks, Chaudhry Salam said, adding that they also intended to cancel the licences of all such impersonators in addition to taking legal action against them.

The letters were written as a consequence of Feb 3 Supreme Court hearing into the non-professional attitude demonstrated by certain lawyers, where the court had bemoaned the absence of punitive action from the PbBC, despite receiving approximately 5,000 complaints by litigants during the past few years.

The Pakistan Bar Council, which is the premier legal body in the country, is also seized with a number of complaints against different lawyers, some of whom are quite senior.

“We intent to register FIRs against fake lawyers after verification,” Chaudhry Salam said, adding that the fraudsters had been divided into four categories by the provincial bar council.

In the first category are those who have fake licences to practise as lawyers, but pose as advocates. Then come those who have genuine licences but their educational degrees are fake. Then there are individuals who appear before different courts pretending to be lawyers but have no legal education or licence. The final category includes non-professionals, i.e. those who have legal licences but are doing some other business and just posing as lawyers.

The provincial bar council also intend to clean up the list of registered lawyers with them, Chaudhry Salam said, adding many lawyers had passed away but their names still existed in the list of lawyers and therefore prone to be misused during the elections of the bar councils.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2015

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