Sedi Elrington says the Bar Association is horrible

A proposal to change the Legal Profession Act is being hotly debated among legal minds.  That issue blew up earlier this week and today the Attorney General Wilfred Elrington indicated that he will be moving very soon to push through the amendment which will remove compulsory membership in the Bar Association. The move came to light through a letter from Solicitor General Cheryl Krusen to Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin and while there has been no official position from the Bar, there has been criticism to the move which seems arbitrary and, in the words of attorney Dickie Bradley, the timing is suspicious. Elrington says that it’s absolute nonsense, since he started pushing for that amendment five years ago when he first became Attorney-General. And today he made no apology, and in fact roundly criticized the Bar Association in no uncertain terms.

Wilfred Elrington, Attorney-General

Wilfred Elrington

“That was something which I initiated from the time I was first made attorney general five years ago and I raised the idea. And I think it was my colleague, B.Q. Pitts, who when he was Attorney General who saw it to fruition in terms of the actual production of the bill. And now I am going to be having the chance of introducing it to parliament. But it is nothing that just came up. So that the suggestion that it is something that just came up and that that there was some ulterior motive and that we want to get after the P.U.P.s in the Bar Association…there is no truth or substance to that. It is something that that was there all the while. I don’t think the Bar Association will break up because majority of the attorneys are in fact, the majority of attorneys now to my mind belong to the People’s United Party so those people I don’t see will want to leave the Bar; they are content with it. The people who may not subscribe to it are people who, for one reason or the other, are not content with it. I have not been happy with it for years, but not because I perceive the membership to be members of the People’s United Party; that was not my rationale for not wanting to be associated with it. I did not find that the attorneys were sufficiently independent in their thinking and that they were sufficiently solicitous about the welfare of the members of the society. They were not very willing to contribute to the legal aid; they were not prepared to do pro-bono work.”

Jules Vasquez, Channel 7

“Mister Godfrey Smith wrote today a handful of high school scholarships could have been awarded each year to deserving marginalized youth; reform should have been initiated but the Bar didn’t do that. This is what Godfrey Smith wrote.”

Wilfred Elrington

“No, the Bar has been horrible and I have been a member. But you suggest it to them and nothing happens. So it is not true to suggest that there is any pernicious design against them. Really and truly that’s not true at all.”

Today former Attorney-General and prodigious writer Godfrey Smith weighed in on the issue with his very outspoken blog Flashpoint. He says that while there is some truth to the AG’s criticism of the Bar Association, it is far from the whole truth. He points to a more personal reason for the proposed amendment, referring to, “the Attorney-General’s long standing feeling that the Bar has not accorded him the recognition and respect enjoyed by the elite of the club. His elevation to senior counsel was opposed by senior members of the bar…when he last offered himself for president at one of these meetings, he was outgunned by Derek Courtenay.” Smith says a lot more, but closes by stating that, “Mr. Elrington might think he is teaching the Bar a lesson and getting even with it for past slights. In the end, this move will have no impact in terms of improving the justice sector. An Attorney General less blinded by resentment should have been able to, with the authority of his office behind him, inspire the profession and the wider society with a vision for wide-reaching reform.”