What good is new legislation to remedy an issue of corruption & public confidence in our legal system, without a review of the past ?
Not much good to anyone, really ... certainly of no use to those countless people who have struggled over the years, even, decades, against the odds after they had lost everything at the hands of their lawyer, and against the legal professions's system of self regulation of complaints against crooked lawyers by the Law Society of Scotland & Faculty of Advocates.
Well, there has to be an answer & a solution to this problem .. as there must literally be thousands of people from over the years who have had complaints against their lawyers made a mess of by the Law Society of Scotland .. and with the passing of the Legal Profession & Legal Aid (Scotland) Bill, it's now time to consider this question.
As a starter to what I hope will be a productive discussion & eventual solution & settlement of this thorny issue, I have raised a petition at the Scottish Parliament, which you can view here.
Petition by Peter Cherbi calling for the Scottish Parliament to seek an effective, transparent and wholly independent means of review of cases of alleged injustice, caused by actions and decisions of the Law Society of Scotland and Faculty of Advocates, relating to the regulation of complaints made by members of the public against the legal profession, either by giving such powers to the new Scottish Legal Complaints Commission or by setting up an independent review commission.
You can also read my submission to the Justice 2 Committee consideration on the Legal Profession & Legal Aid (Scotland) Bill, here : Submission by Peter Cherbi to Justice 2 Committee on the LPLA Bill
I have to confess, I am not a person who has much confidence in the Petitions system of the Scottish Parliament .. principally because I know of so much which goes on behind the scenes to kill off the controversial petitions or those which could actually do some good for the country. Let's say .. its a mixture of politicians wanting to kill off the public's ideas, while taking credit for the whole thing at a later date, and pure simple old corruption, where professions & interests who could be badly affected by such nefarious ideas as transparency, honesty & increased consumer rights, lobby, nay .. order the Parliament to drop any such petition which they care to kill off.
However, that aside, it's definitely time for the debate to start on how to resolve the legal profession's 'sins of the past', where countless complaints, frauds, fiddles, & more have been covered up by the Law Society of Scotland to allow crooked lawyers to carry on practicing, at the expense of ruining members of the public & denying a measure of justice which may indeed have prevented the lack of public confidence in lawyers self regulating lawyers getting to the stage it has.
When I use the term 'debate' .. I'm not talking about a useless debate lasting a few years, allowing more stalling tactics from the likes of the hateful Douglas Mill & his colleagues over at Drumsheugh Gardens to prevent the long suffering clients from having their cases finally resolved. I'm talking about the many victims we already know about, and those we don't, coming forward to have the wrongs made against them put right properly, taking into account the wasted years of having to deal with a system which was widely known to be corrupt by everyone from the public to the media, to Government..
We all know who has stood by while the likes of the Law Society of Scotland has carried on fiddling complaints. I'm talking now, of course, about the Scottish Executive and the many politicians who have had constituents writing to them for decades over problems with crooked lawyers, the Law Society of Scotland, and the system of handing complaints against legal representatives in Scotland - which has been an absolute farce - designed that way of course, to allow the legal profession to do as it pleased, and handle it's own dirty laundry, where it could arbitrarily dismiss complaints or fiddle their outcomes, effectively starve & boycott the public from obtaining legal representation to resolve issues of critical & severe complaints .. with there being no one else to turn to .. all this going on while the Scottish Executive stood by, in full knowledge of the situtation, where people suffered previously, lost their wealth, their health, livelihoods .. and nothing was done .. nothing at all, to help anyone.
We have already seen how the likes of Douglas Mill, Chief Executive of the Law Society, has personally intervened in client complaints to delay & fiddle their outcomes, so much that he lied to a Parliamentary investigation, when faced with contradictory content from his own memos .. but as if to prove such a man's feeling of omnipotence, Mill then went on to threaten the Parliament with legal action if it didn't amend the LPLA Bill to the legal profession's own liking. How can the public deal with such a hateful figure ? a man as Mill, who is obviously consumed with hate & ill feeling towards the very clients who provide his membership with their income ...
Here are some of the articles I have covered on the actions of the legal profession when it comes to regulating complaints against its own, to demonstrate the conduct of the likes of Douglas Mill & his colleagues against clients :
The Corrupt Link Revealed - How the Law Society of Scotland manages client complaints & settlements
Law Society of Scotland claims success in gagging the press over Herald newspaper revelations of secret case memos
Scotsman responds to Peter Cherbi and the Herald with a living eulogy of Douglas Mill
Scottish Legal Awards - Lawyer Lawyer on the wall, who is the most crooked of us all ?
Using the Master Policy of the Law Society of Scotland to sue a negligent lawyer is impossible
Law Society of Scotland lobbies Scottish Parliament to pass anti consumer amendments on LPLA Bill threatening Court action if demands not met
Legal Profession & Legal Aid Bill finally passed by Scottish Parliament, with amendments.
Having read the above, and many other reports I have made over the last year on this site, I'm sure you will agree, its time for the sins of the past to be put right, and those victims of the legal profession who have suffered previously because of the corrupt practices of self regulation should have their say, and be compensated for their interminable losses.
I am encouraging all of you, to come forward and support this petition, or write one of your own and submit it to the Parliament, and to pick up the campaign, and make it a strong one, to bring a fully independent review & settlement system into speedy existence to remedy the disgraceful sins of the past of the people we entrusted our legal business to, but who failed us in the most disgraceful way possible - with Government & politicians looking on & doing nothing to answer our pleas for help.
It is time to take back justice from these crooks, and end this shame of Scotland's legal system, where the public have indeed, been injured by Scottish Law and those who sought to protect their colleagues, at the expense of us & our lives.
