At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi be­lieves that the re­mu­ner­a­tion of at­tor­neys who deal with non-con­tentious court mat­ters is ridicu­lousy low and must be put in­to con­text.

His com­ments came one day af­ter Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Rose-Marie Belle An­toine at the open­ing of the 2019/2020 Law Term gave her opin­ion that lawyers' fees in T&T are too high which has been deny­ing some cit­i­zens jus­tice.

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said there are two as­pects to at­tor­neys' re­mu­ner­a­tion-con­tentious and non-con­tentious.

Con­tentious le­gal work re­lates to le­gal mat­ters that takes place be­tween two or more par­ties such as a court hear­ing or tri­bunal hear­ing.

Non-con­tentious le­gal work re­lates to trans­ac­tions oc­cur­ing be­tween one or more par­ties such as the sale or pur­chase of a house.

"Con­tentious is every­thing that is in court. There are rules and stan­dards and brack­ets for fees which have been re­vised by the rules that come out of court."

What has not been re­vised, Al-Rawi said was the non-con­tentious re­mu­ner­a­tion "which is in fact ridicu­lous­ly low" stat­ing this fee was in­tro­duced in 1998 and had not been changed.

"So there is one end of the pro­fes­sion that is ex­treme­ly low and when you look at that from a An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing, Coun­ter­ing of Fi­nance Ter­ror­ism and FIU per­spec­tive one can ar­gue they are at a loss. It is the con­tentious fee as­pect that is per­haps high­er that can be dealt with by the in­tro­duc­tion of a num­ber of mea­sures."

As AG, Al-Rawi said he ne­go­ti­at­ed "fees down" for the Gov­ern­ment.

"The oth­er as­pects of the in­tro­duc­tion of con­tin­gency fees and oth­er arrange­ments those are po­ten­tial so­lu­tions. But when you look at it fac­tu­al­ly non-con­tentious work is be­yond 20 years in terms of the last re­vi­sion of fees. Con­tentious work is about cur­rent. But that in prac­tice has been ne­go­ti­at­ed down­ward."

Speak­ing on the Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Avory Sinanan, SC, said if le­gal fees are as­tro­nom­i­cal, then it was all part of the high cost of liv­ing.

"I think Trinidad has been the anvil as it were for a num­ber of com­plex le­gal mat­ters that have car­ried the Caribbean ju­rispru­dence for­ward and that has tak­en time and ab­sorbed re­sources."

In the field of pub­lic and ad­min­is­trate laws, Sinanan said T&T has been at the cut­ting edge.

He said in 2015, a guide­line for fees was put in place.

The prac­tice guide was is­sued in keep­ing with the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Costs Com­mit­tee on the grades/bands and guide­lines fig­ures for hourly rates for at­tor­neys.

Sinanan said the pro­vi­sion of le­gal ser­vices is sub­ject to mar­ket forces.

"It is open to a lit­i­gant to choose a high price lawyer if he wants. Or if he prefers to ush­er him­self in some­thing less than a Rolls Royce lawyer to the High Court, then he goes else­where."

To lev­el the play­ing field, Sinanan said the Chief Jus­tice in con­sul­ta­tion with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T in­sti­tut­ed a cer­tain prac­tice di­rec­tion which linked the stand­ing of at­tor­neys to the num­ber of hours they may spend on a mat­ter and de­mar­cat­ed what should be charged as a guide­line.

This is what at­tor­neys fol­low, he said, but it has not been cast in con­crete.

Sinanan said if one at­tor­ney is tasked with do­ing all the work in a mat­ter, dead­lines are missed.

"There­fore, it pro­motes a speedy and a more ef­fi­cient res­o­lu­tion and a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the client if there is a di­vi­sion of labour...where you have some­one prepar­ing the brief and an­oth­er per­son pre­sent­ing it in court."

Asked if he was fear­ful that peo­ple would be­lieve that lawyers are try­ing to be smart men with their fees and have been out of align­ment with mar­ket forces, Sinanan said this has been so from day one.

"It is part of our cul­ture to en­gage in lawyer bash­ing. You know, when a client gets a good ser­vice and he pays even a high price for it he for­gets the price that he pays. Long af­ter he re­mem­bers the good ser­vice that he gets."

He said a lot of lawyers do pro bono work.

Sinanan said if An­toine was so con­cerned, the Law Fac­ul­ty could open a le­gal aid clin­ic to ac­com­mo­date poor peo­ple.

He even sug­gest­ed that staff at the Law Fac­ul­ty could make arrange­ments with UWI to at­tend court to rep­re­sent im­pov­er­ished in­di­vid­u­als "rather than stay in an ivory tow­er and from a se­cure and cushy po­si­tion and lam­bast lawyers who have to go out there and face the mu­sic every day."

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and at­tor­ney Garvin Nicholas said if at­tor­neys op­er­ate strict­ly with­in the guide­line fees clients would be best served.

" I am not cer­tain that every­body op­er­ates with­in the guide­lines. What I am say­ing that some at­tor­neys fees that I have seen I find in­cred­i­ble. But most peo­ple op­er­ate with­in the guide­lines."

Nicholas said he would no­ti­fy clients about their fees up­front.

"So that they would know with­out ques­tion what it is."

He said the fees pre­scribed by the le­gal pro­fes­sion act are rea­son­able.

One at­tor­ney who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said a few con­sid­er­a­tions should be tak­en in­to ac­count.

"Most at­tor­neys op­er­ate on their own or in the form of cham­bers arrange­ments and have con­sid­er­able over­heads like rent, staff salaries, elec­tric­i­ty bill, sta­tionery and main­te­nance of of­fice equip­ment."

An­oth­er lawyer point­ed out that a se­nior UWI law lec­tur­er min­i­mum and max­i­mum an­nu­al com­pen­sa­tion pack­age was $340,000 and $421,000 re­spec­tive­ly, while a law lec­tur­er min­i­mum and max­i­mum year­ly salary was $239,000 and $333,000 re­spec­tive­ly.