Approximately one year ago Dame Margaret Bazley identified in an investigative report that the Legal Aid system in NZ was being abused by some lawyers.
An Auckland lawyer has just been found guilty of inappropriate accounting for receipt of legal aid. His defence was that his accounting procedures were not what they should be and that he was sorry. Wow, what ordinary person say to that!
How much of the $137 million spent on legal aid was correctly identified by the Justice Department as inaccurate claims?
To compound the call for ‘naming and shaming' the culprits, we now have some boofhead saying on TV that it would be wrong to ‘publicly ridicule' the legal profession by naming and shaming those identified.
The smartarse lawyers who have stolen from the public purse are no better than the lowlife abusers and thieves that they have represented in Court.
It appears education does not necessarily guarantee good public citizenship.
Maureen J Anderson, Pyes Pa.