Opportunist lawyers fleece ignorant clients
Mpho Mokwape | Monday June 8, 2015 15:22
This surfaced at a recent appearance of officials from the Administration of Justice (AoJ) before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Maun East legislator and PAC member, Kosta Markus complained that many clients were ridiculously exploited by attorneys.
Markus had wanted the AoJ to explain what was being done on situations where lawyers and attorneys were continuously exploiting Batswana by charging them excessively for legal advice or representation.
“Attorneys in this country are very expensive. They even charge you for stealing a few minutes from their time. More Batswana are being exploited because many do not have a choice when they are in situations where an attorney is to be engaged,” he said.
He had also wanted the AoJ to explain if there was any provision whereby the attorney legal fees could be monitored.
In response, Registrar and Master of the High Court, Michael Motlhabi, said there was a taxation process, which was meant to prevent such exploitation of clients.
Motlhabi said taxation has always been in place to avoid cases where attorneys and lawyers charged members of the public exorbitant fees for legal representation.
“There is the taxation process where the court can work out the magnitude of one’s case and recommend how he/she should charge the client. Other than that, there are no other means of the court determining legal fees for attorneys and their clients,” he said.
He explained that taxation should be done in front of both the client and the attorney, pointing out that before any attorney could charge the client, both should approach the court for taxation.
Motlhabi, however, acknowledged that many Batswana might not be aware of such provision, hence the continuous exploitation by attorneys.“Despite all these measures, many are still exploited when seeking legal advice or representation simply because they are not aware that such provisions do exist in our legal system,” he said.
He said the issue was one area where the AoJ needed to work more to educate the nation to avoid a situation where clients were exploited because they lacked basic information.