THE LAW'S EXTORTION.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 922, 12 September 1896, Page 2

THE LAW'S EXTORTION.

Those Bills of Costs.

' The fir9t thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.'— S?ia/;osi>f or, l King Henry Vl.' Society has never been much enamoured of lawyers' bills of costs, which mast have been pretty notorious even in the days of Jack Cade, whom Shakespear makes hang a man because he was suspected of being

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able to keep accounts, and go on the warpath hunting for lawyers as the ' social pest ' of those primitive times. In the existing incomprehensibly - muddled and mystifying state of our laws, lawyers to interpret the jargon in which statutes and legal documents are couched are a necessary evil, for the time being. We look forward, however, to that blest millennium when there will be no more lawyers, as someone else has said ' there will be no more sea,' and when consequently there will be no more lawyers' bills of costs. And if that distant but desirable consummation won't be a millennium in itself to the heart-sick litigant of to-day, then we don't know what will, short of Paradise . All of which we were reminded of by reading the answer given in the House of Representatives by the Premier to Mr Frank Lawry's question whether the Government would take into consideration the advisableness of appointing a legal adviser for the Maori people, in order to protect them from heavy costs levied by the legal profession. Mr Seddon's answer war to the effect that he was pained to have to admit that cases which had come under his notice proved very conclusively that extortionate legal charges had been made in connection with native land transactions, without costs being submitted to taxation. Some protection, he thought, Bhould be afforded the natives in this matter, and his own opinion was that 'someone should be authorised to tax legal costs charged to natives,costs to be rendered void if they were not taxed.' So the probability is that, as the 'result of Mr Lawry's question, something will be done to protect the natives from rapacious lawyers and their shamefully extortionate bills of costs. s It is a well-known fact that the Native Lands Court and native affairs frequently have been the happy hunting ground of the legal harpy for many years. The natives are ' cute ' enough, but all their newly- acquired civilisation and cuteness do not avail them against the lawyer. The - writer knows of cases where natives have had to part with their patrimony by the hundred and thousand acres to satisfy the excessive claims of the lawyers and the demands of native land ' agents,' besides the cutting off from blocks of the best slices to satisfy survey liens, notwithstanding that the natives did not want the surveys made. But the lawyers' charges were invariably the worst. Works of art — legal artfulness — as are bills of costs rendered to European clients, they are reasonableness and moderation compared with many of the charges made in connection with native land matters. The Maori, as a rule, doesn't know the modus operandi oi getting bills of costs taxed, and it has very often ended in his property going into the maw of the legal shark. If some of the transactions in which lawyers, most of them ' eminently respectable ' citizens, too, were concerned in connection with the .Native Lands Courts which sat in the Waikato a few years ago, as well as cases in the Upper Thames> were accurately published, the sensation they would cause in some quarters would not soon be forgotten. It is unfortunately true that while the Government has on the whole done well by the Maoris and their lands, the natives have been fleeced by speculators and agents, aided by unscrupulous lawyers. Frequently a harm-less-looking application respecting native lands is made in Judge's Chambers in the Supreme Court. The public know nothing of the circumstances of the case ; the lawyers obscure the plain issues with a cloud of legal slang and technical phraseology which no lay fellow can understand, and the application ' in re ' some block or other is assented to ; the lawyers send in their bills, and the Maori has to grin and pay. No wonder that the natives are embittered against us on the score of the land laws. How can they feel otherwise when they cannot move hand or foot without having to pay a thumping big lawyer's bill for something or other in connection with their land ? The Government should long ago have appointed legal advocates, paid by the Crown, to act for the natives, and so prevent the latter, in a very simple manner,

And the man who has not got any money to hire a professional mud-slinger or perverter of the truth stands no show at all. The fact is, the lawyers have so cleverly built up that gigantic nightmare known as our statutes, that no one but themselves can interpret them. And yet we return lawyers to Parliament 1 What else can we expect ? Really it seems to us as if it would be a very simple way of solving the difficulty to adopt old Jack Cade's advice and 'kill all the lawyers.' Anyhow, there is a national monument awaiting the legislator who will tackle the herculean task of so reducing our laws to common-sense that we won't need any more lawyers. Either every man his own advocate, or professional pleaders must be provided and salaried by the State.

from being fleeced under the guise of the law. But why not go further than this ? Why should law and justice be made a matter of money at all ? Why should we tolerate a system of alleged justice which literally depends on the amount of money possessed by one or the other of the unfortunate litigants? There is a pleasing popular fiction to the effect that justice is free to all, equally, but this legend should be relegated to the limbo of iE sop's Fables. The circumstances being equal, the man with the biggest purse wins his case, for the simple reason that he is able to hire a cleverer and more expensive lawyer, who is more skilful in the art of bamboozling judge and jury into specious arguments and artfully put misstatements. Or, as sometimes happens, he has a coarse tongue and no sense of decency, and, by assailing the opposing party with his vileness, succeeds in getting some of his dirt to stick and thus damaging an otherwise just cause in the eyes of the Court. We have one or more such coarse lawyers, devoid of every gentlemanly instinct, amongst our successful practitioners in Auckland.