LEGAL PROFESSION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 121, 21 April 1938, Page 9

LEGAL PROFESSION.

SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC. ADDRESS TO LAWYERS. Per Press Association. CHRJ S I CHURCH, April 21. The Christmas vacation of a tortnight when all legal offices were closed should he reconsidered. The proiession had to preserve continuity of service and lawyers must always lie available when needed. Mr A. C. Stephens, of Dunedin, advanced this argument when he spoke of the relations of the legal proiession and the public in the couise of an address to the conference of the New Zealand Law Society to-day. Although the vacation was no longer than the holidays of public servants and employees of commercial undertakings, there was, said Mr Stephens, a certain amount of complaint from business and commercial men because tlifeir legal advisers were not available for the Christmas fortnight This might be adjusted to the advantage of everyone. , i . . . , Mr Stephens emphasised that a lawyer owed to the public a gratuitous service. “He should be prepared to give assistance to those "ho aie genuinely too poor to pay for legal assistance,” be added. “At present a considerable amount of work is don for nothing. As no genuine case of distress should go without rediess. o ganised legal aid to the poor is no" being formulated so that the poor persons relief procedure which ha.s been so successful in England "ill ■ adopted to suit conditions here. This matter has received the attention of the Law Revision Committee, and a good scheme lias been outlined. The duty of lawyers to give general service to the community m niatteis outside their purely professional sphrne was also stressed by Mr Stephens.