Is the legal profession still noble in Guyana and the Region?

The legal profession in Guyana has been in the news for the past week after President David Granger announced the names of nine persons, including a sitting High Court Judge and three women, to be members of the inner bar. This is the first time in two decades that the Government has decided to award “silk” to lawyers.

There have been letters to the press, social media and discussions in clubs, bars and the like, about the method of appointment and who should or should not be elevated… whether the appointees were connected to the Administration, if they deserved it and most importantly persons who were not chosen.

In the United States all lawyers are attorneys and have the same status – there is no inner bar and in 2003 an English Minister, Lord Irvine tried unsuccessfully to scrap the Queen’s Counsel system in the United Kingdom.

Guyana abolished the term “Queens Counsel” and replaced it with Senior Counsel in February 1970 when the country gained republican status and since then the elevation process to the inner bar was not too consistent and there have been complaints that persons who do not deserve “silk” were elevated and a few deserved cases were side-stepped, but we should always remember that we do not live in a perfect world.

The Council of Legal Education (CLE) was established in 1971 following an agreement signed by the governments of Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University of Guyana (UG). The first Director of the CLE was Guyanese Aubrey Frazer, who was named principal of the Norman Manley Law School, and Dr Fenton Ramsahoye as his deputy who headed the Hugh Wooding Law School.

The establishment of the law schools in the Region attracted hundreds who no longer had to journey thousands of miles to London in the bitter cold to read law and because of this, the Caribbean is now flooded with lawyers – mainly females. I will like to note that in the late 1970s and in 1980s the English trained lawyers did not recognise Caribbean trained lawyers.

They snuffed at us – calling us Caricom lawyers. Now more than 90 per cent of the senior judges and top lawyers in the Region are products of the CLE. There are only two of the nine persons named in the last list as SCs that were UK trained. I refer to Claudette Singh and Vidyanand “Vish” Persaud.

The first West Indian trained lawyer to receive “silk” was Tapley Seaton of St Kitts and Nevis, and that was in 1988, 28 years ago, who was incidentally the first Caribbean trained to be Attorney General. Now Sir Tapley is the Governor General of the twin island state. He is now only 66 years of age.

The legal profession was known to be a noble profession, but over the years some lawyers have been receiving battering – accused of ripping-off people, betraying clients, acting irresponsibly and object of suspicion rather giving counsel. Perhaps I should add that the Inns of Court in London have certain ethics whereby lawyers cannot advertise their profession as their counterpart in the United States. However a West Indian trained lawyer, Israel Khan of Trinidad and Tobago, dared the authorities and carried an ad in the Trinidad Express, where in 1980 Efforts to discipline him failed, Khan argued that the CLE does not have written restriction against advertisement by lawyers. He is now a Senior Counsel and the leading criminal attorney in the twin island republic.

Sincerely,

Oscar Ramjeet