The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A former Bahamas Bar Association president yesterday said “concerns” over attorney ethics and client billing practices will be addressed at a March 24 seminar.

Dr Peter Maynard told Tribune Business that the seminar, dealing with ethics and law firm management, would seek to address “fundamental issues” affecting the Bahamian legal profession and its clients.

“Ethics is a big problem with the Bar, not just us in the Bahamas, and billing is a matter everyone is still looking at very closely, and the public is very concerned about,” he said.

With a 15 per cent Value-Added Tax (VAT) levy set to be added to all legal bills come July 1 this year, Dr Maynard acknowledged: “The perception nowadays is that everyone wants more for less. How do you deal with that at this time?

“Frankly, with a young Bar and young profession, one has to deal with some fundamental issues - billing fairly, not interfering with client funds that should be held in a separate trust account. There’s a lot of room for improvement, so that’s the reason for having this seminar.”

Dr Maynard said he wanted the seminar to attract College of the Bahamas (COB)law students, emphasising that he wanted to catch budding attorneys “even earlier” than their final law schools.

He added that one session would be titled ‘In the Life of an Associate’, and deal with the ethical “dilemmas” they were likely to encounter and the options they could take to resolve them.

Meanwhile, Dr Maynard said the second annual Arbitration and Investment Forum, scheduled for January 23, which he is helping to organise, was also geared towards social and community workers.

Arguing that mediation could help reduce crime by defusing disputes before they turned violent, Dr Maynard said: “I’ve suggested to the community workers that in many cases they are aware of issues brewing in the communities they serve, so why not encourage these people to sit around the table, get skilled mediators in and abide by whatever decisions they make.

“Whether it’s a dispute over boundaries or a dispute over debt, they can sense whatever’s brewing in the community, bring the people to the table and resolve it before it becomes something larger.”

Dr Maynard said registration fee proceeds from the second annual Arbitration and Investment Forum would help to finance a six-strong COB team’s participation in the VIS Arbitration Moot to be held in Vienna at the end of April.