New laws controlling lawyers to be passed in a few weeks?

baroFeyzi Hansel, the General Secretary of the Bar Council, contacted NCFP and gave us some news about attempts to control advocates (lawyers) in north Cyprus. He informed us that three or four months ago new Advocates Laws had been sent to the Council Of Ministers and the Legislative Assembly and are expected to be passed before the New Year. These laws, once passed will allow the disciplinary board to gain “new practical and operative functions which will result in effective disciplinary judgements and faster disciplinary procedures.”

Feyzi admits that currently there are too many complaints pending before the disciplinary board but hopes that very soon the disciplinary board will make decisions on some of these cases. This seems to be the central issue, it is one thing to have rules and regulations but if a disciplinary board is not willing to punish any of its members then no new law will change that. There is no evidence yet that it has the heart to punish an advocate, or that the punishment would fit the crime. Perhaps only the lengthy suspension, for example, of one of the well known advocates who continually pops up in homebuyers’ complaints, would change that opinion?

Another issue which homebuyers are being made aware of is their ignorance of the law. There seems to be no access to the laws affecting their purchases except through their advocates. This has the potential for them to be misinformed. Even locals have this difficulty. To this end, as a starting point, I have emailed Feyzi and asked him if he could summarise the content of the new Advocate Laws and this reply will be published here.

“Dear Feyzi,
I’ve published an additional article as a result of your comments and have written that I would ask you for an English summary of the new Advocates Laws. Is this possible? I would also like to make you a contributor for NCFP, in other words publish under your own name articles concerning law. Your command of the English language is good but, as editor, I would be happy to fine tune it for publication.
Readers are looking for hard evidence of BARO disciplining advocates who seriously breach professional standards. They are also looking for summaries in English of laws affecting their everyday lives, Naomi Mehmet does a fine job but I was wondering if you could also help educate those of us who are used to different legal systems. I am not sure how you can help, but it would be excellent if you could raise your profession’s standing in our reader’s eyes.”

Feyzi did apologise for the “troubles arising from the lawyers,” but explained that this would change nothing. If the disciplinary board actually works then, of course, this would be a hundred times better than an apology. I’ll be a bit boring here and finish with my favourite saying which is, “what you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say.” In other words talk is cheap, so we’ll wait for your actions before deciding if you’re serious.

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