Anguilla News covers Anguilla and the wider
Caribbean.
x
OECS Bar
Association seeks mandatory membership for law professionals
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, (CUOPM), February 18 2008 –
The OECS Bar Association is advocating a policy that makes
it mandatory for all practising lawyers to become members of
its respective bar associations and has called on member
countries to implement the Legal Profession Bill.
According to the OECS Secretariat in Castries, St. Lucia,
the Legal Profession Bill, was among the agenda items at the
just concluded OECS Bar Association meeting.
An OECS news release quotes OECS Bar Association President
Nicole Sylvester as saying that the call for compulsory
membership of all lawyers has been on the cards for several
years.
“I have often advanced that and proposed that case. The
proposed Legal Profession Bill addresses that issue of
compulsory membership because we need our members to be a
part of the process and being a part of the process is not a
burden,” OECS Newslink quoted Sylvester.
She said the benefits include continuing legal education
programmes.
The Legal Profession Bill seeks to link mandatory membership
of the respective bar associations with the issuance of a
practising certificate.
“We are in the business of providing legal services.
Therefore, we need to manage our practice and in order to
sustain quality and competent service we need to constantly
educate ourselves because the Bar keeps changing and the law
is constantly evolving. The law is not static. This will
help to uplift the entire profession,” Sylvester said.
The meeting underlined the necessity to urge the respective
attorneys-general in the OECS to have the Legal Profession
Bill, which has had its first reading in the St. Kitts/Nevis
National Assembly to have the legislation implemented.
Sylvester notes that once the Bill is implemented it will
deal with issues such as continuing legal education,
discipline, insurance and other important tenets that
concern the legal profession and the public as a whole.
Acting Chief Justice of the OECS Supreme Court Sir Brian
Alleyne also supports mandatory membership of the Bar
Association. Sir Brian said too many lawyers are concerned
almost exclusively with their own activities and give no
time to their professional bodies.
Advertisement
“They disregard them, they don’t pay their dues and they
don’t participate in the work of the professional body. I
think that’s regrettable. I think membership and
contribution to the professional body should be a mandatory
requirement so that the bar associations could be properly
funded.
"If they are not properly funded then they cannot be
properly run I think legislation should be introduced in my
view which requires the practising lawyers to contribute
financially to the bar association. I think that’s an
important area for legislative action when we are looking at
the Legal Profession Acts in the region and we need to move
forward the introduction and passing in the Parliaments of
the Legal Profession Acts.”
The recent OECS Bar Association meeting also discussed
collaborative efforts for continuing legal education. To
this end, having already established links with the Faculty
of Law at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill
Campus, and the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad, the
OECS Bar Association will be approaching the Norman Manley
Law School at UWI’s Mona Campus. Discussions are also
ongoing with Judicial Education Institute (JEI) on the
staging of a law education development symposium later this
year.
“We are organising training sessions to bring practical
realities to bear on some of the issues that will affect
citizens throughout the entire OECS region,” Sylvester said.
The OECS Bar Association, formed in 1989, positions itself
as a value added component for the professional development
of law practitioners.
Its mission is to enhance the administration of justice.
Among its success stories, the OECS Bar Association has
acted as a catalyst for change of the enumeration packages
for judges.
