The Hindu : New Delhi News : Don't open gates for foreign lawyers, urges DBA

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Sunday, Oct 08, 2006
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Don't open gates for foreign lawyers, urges DBA

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Bar Association (DBA) of Tis Hazari district courts here has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not to throw open the legal profession to foreign lawyers in a hurry.

A joint statement issued by DBA president Rajiv Khosla and secretary Sanjeev Nasiar on Saturday said that since the legal profession in the country was very different from the one in foreign countries where it was considered a business, it could not be defined as a service for trade in our country.

Opening of the legal profession to foreign lawyers would lead to removal of the ban on advertising the profession that would only benefit rich lawyers and allow them to monopolise it to the disadvantage of lawyers belonging to the middle class, they said.

Conversion of the profession into a trade for business would have very adverse effects on the poor as a majority of the people were still below the poverty line in the country, the statement stated.

Poor litigants

Huge amounts of public money spent on providing free legal services to the poor was an example of the poor conditions of litigants who were financially not strong enough to engage a lawyer, the joint statement said.

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