LEGAL PROFESSION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18990, 15 April 1936, Page 15

LEGAL PROFESSION

PRACTITIONERS CONFER ADDRESS 13Y MINISTER CLAIMS OF SOCIETY (Per Press Association.) DUNEDIN, this day. Barristers from all parts of the Dominion arc attending the first legal conference held in six years. The inaugural address was given this morning hv Mr. 11. F. O’Leary, ol Wellington, the president of the New Zealand Law Society, who presided. The Hon. JL G. R. Mason, the Attorney-General, gave a short address on delegated legislation, and Mr. 11. 11. Cornish, the Solicitor-General, also attended. Mr. O’Leary, in the course of his address, referred to the defeat during che passage of the society’s bill of one amendment designed to ensure that legal work would be done only by the legal profession, but it- was intended in the near future to bring forward this provision. it being hoped that recognition that it was a “sound trade union principle” would assure it- a passage. (Laughter.) Mr. O’Leary referred at length, to the provision made by the profession to right any wrongs to clients by defaulting members of the profession. Hi also claimed that, ’ during the years ol difficulty, the profession had not been lacking in public spirit, nor sympathy for the, distressed. A perusal of the average practitioner’s accounts would reveal that a large amount of gratuitous or inadequately remunerated work had been done.

The inevitability of delegated legislation by Orders in Council in the form of rules and regulations was stressed by the Attorney General in bis address. He intimated that a scheme would shortly be initiated under which rules and regulations would Is: made more conveniently, accessible to _ practitioners than by publication in voluminous gazettes. He considered that publication in the form under which the statutes were issued would solve the problem.