Supreme Court favours law to regulate hefty lawyers’ fee

The Supreme Court favours a law to check growing commercialisation of the legal profession and to “prescribe floor and ceiling in fees” to ensure the poor were not nudged out of the justice delivery system.

Expressing concern over lawyers demanding “astronomical” fees from litigants, the SC on Tuesday asked the government to ensure that the poor, too, could get legal assistance from the best lawyers so that their right to equal justice was not violated.

The legal profession should make its services available to the needy on the lines of state-run hospitals, a bench of justice AK Goel and justice UU Lalit said.

“It was observed that like public hospitals for medical services, the public sector should have a role in providing legal services for those who cannot afford fee,” the bench said, citing the 131st law commission report.

What a lawyer charges a client remains largely unregulated in India. The advocates’ fees rules are only for guidance and there is no bar to money claimed beyond what is fixed under the rules.

The SC Rules, 2013, permit a lawyer to charge a maximum of ~8,000 per hearing, barely a fraction of what is actually billed. The country’s top lawyers charge anywhere between ~10 lakh and ~20 lakh for an appearance.

The court also said though a law commission report on ethics in the legal profession was submitted in the year 1988, no effective law was enacted to regularise the fees or for providing the “publicsector services” to needy litigants without any fees or at standardised fees.

The court said commercialisation to the extent of exploiting the litigant and misbehaviour to the extent of browbeating the court needed to be checked.

Breach of professional duties to the court and the litigant affecting the right of a person to speedy and inexpensive justice should also be looked in to.

Lawyers generally charge according to clients’ paying capacity. So, the fee varies, with maximum for corporates.

NEW DELHI: