A few weeks back this column (Thought Leader) touched on the latitude granted to the professions to regulate themselves without state oversight. Strikingly, the only South African professionals to shroud this privileged process in secrecy are lawyers.If one wants to check on one's doctor's reputation, the Health Professions Council website details all disciplinary hearings against a practitioner's name, including the full charge sheet and sentence. But with attorneys there is simply no way of checking their vaunted professionalism on matters like failing to appear in court, not following client instructions, not responding to client correspondence, deliberate delays, financial mismanagement and overcharging.
Unlike, say, the United Kingdom where disciplinary rulings are searchable online by name of both practioner and firm, SA's law societies simply won't disclose the identity of disciplined attorneys. The exception is strikings from the roll, which openness has nothing to do with law society largesse but because a struck attorney's name is automatically a matter of High Court record.Professor Hugh Corder of the University of Cape Town's law faculty describes such secrecy as 'horrifying'. He says it flouts the Constitution, which governs the accountability of institutions that have 'public power or exercise a public function'.
