Former Attorney General speaks about GOB’s outsourcing legal work

Godfrey Smith

Also on Wednesday, when a reporter brought up the matter of the Prime Minister’s first wife, Lois Young, being contracted as lead attorney in many of the government’s high profile cases he said he makes no apologies for that.  Pointing to Young’s pro-bono legal work for the unions and the Association of Concerned Belizeans before the elections, Barrow said she charges at the regular rates of a senior counsel and gives excellent value for the services rendered.  Today when we sat down with Attorney, Godfrey Smith, while he did not have a problem with outsourcing, he did have serious reservations with Young’s contract.

Godfrey Smith, Attorney

“Obviously, there may be some cases depending on the level of skill or specialization required where a particular attorney known to be skilled or specialized in a particular area of law would be best suited to handle a particular case.  So as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing particular cases to particular individuals, depending on the circumstances of the case. If it is to deal specifically with particular cases, select cases, then there would be nothing wrong with that.  In this case however, it appears—well not appears—is a fact that virtually all cases other than the most paltry and simple cases have been outsourced to that particular firm.  That is the government’s business to do. Obviously, it will have to answer to taxpayers and to the voting public on that matter. But more from a legal perspective, what is of more interest to me, as a former attorney general, is that at the last opening of the Supreme Court just a month ago the attorney general got up and listed among his accomplishments the fact that they had retained the services of an experienced and skilful Solicitor General quite recently. So the more probing question from a legal standpoint is what has become of the Solicitor General? And if the Attorney General and the Attorney General’s Ministry went to the trouble of retaining and screening for this solicitor general, how come the solicitor general and his set of attorneys are not involved in these pieces of litigation?”

There is also the fundamental issue of value for money. Do taxpayers who ultimately pay the million dollar legal fees get the best bang for their money? And who really does the billing; is it the AG or is it the PM? Still on issue of legal fees, the PM was adamant that his own law firm is not befitting from government’s legal work, but a quick search in our archives shows his partner Rodwell Williams, as recent as January, represented the government for Telemedia against Smart.