Samson's Take: Be lawyers for the poor - Acting CJ to new lawyers

to make themselves available to people who cannot afford because we are in a society where many can't afford the services of a lawyer and in fact there are just very few not too many lawyers. So it was not surprising to hear Justice Paul Bafubi repeat this call to the newly enrolled lawyers yesterday. Who is a lawyer?

A lawyer typically will be like what you find in the constitution to be the qualification for people who must become judges. They are supposed to be persons of high moral character and proving integrity. Guess what? Even where they are signing up to study the law, they are made to give this undertaking that

this is the kind of people they will be high moral character and persons of proving integrity. It is the reason that in article 146 judges fall they are removed if they misconduct themselves misbehavior or they act incompetently. But the problem we have seen and as acknowledged by many over the period is that we have successfully

churned out transactional lawyers. Lawyers who are transactionminded. It doesn't matter sometimes how bad the situation is. Once there is money to make, they'll make the money. We have come to a point where you have lawyers because they are in a particular political party. You watch and listen to them attempt to educate the public on very

simple legal matters and you ask yourself, where are we heading? For example, in the course of the week and before, you'd have heard even some lawyers say that the president has appointed Justice Paul Baff Bunny as the acting chief justice. Yes, I mean it. Lawyers said that some media houses had to publish

that he has been appointed But he's not appointed. Let me just show you what the constitution says in article 144 clause 6. It says where the office of chief justice is vacant or where the chief justice is for any reason unable to perform the functions of his office until a person has been appointed