The issue of errant lawyers has been widely debated for the past few weeks since the publishing of the names of errant lawyers in the newspapers. We at the The National Consumer Complaints Center (NCCC) ourselves had continued to receive complaints from the public on negligent lawyers. Common area of complaint includes delay in completing sale and purchase transactions. Many consumers end up paying interest to developers for delay which is at no fault of theirs. In most of the cases the lawyers and banks will not take the responsibility over such cases and the blame game would start. The common time limit allowed to complete a normal house purchase transaction is

2+1 and if this timing is inadequate, the Bar ouncil must seek avenues 2+to have it extended. Until now we don't see and effords from the Bar Council.

The Bar Council should look into this matter immediately as consumers are not allowed to choose their own lawyers.

The other common area of greviance is the charging of excessibve contingency fee. It is well known fact that there are lawyer's who charge as high as 40% in contingency fee and this is excluding the 10% which is paid by the insurance company as cost. The Legal Profession Etique Rules clearly forbids the charging of contingency fees but this has been going on right under the nose of the Bar Council and poor consumers are being abused.

The NCCC agree's that the charging of contingency help's poor consumers in obtaining legal representation and therefore the Bar Council should legalise and regulate the charging of contingency fee so that consumers are not shortchanged. If they can control discounts on fee's, then why can't the Bar Council regulate this area as well.

We see that the Bar Council is more interested in issues which does not need urgent attention and by doing so it neglegts bread and butter issues. He NCCC hopes that the Bar Council is more pro-active is adressing issues which affects the consumers at large.