AFTER its success in tackling the banks' interest-rate cartel, the Consumer Council should be laying siege to another area of price-fixing and restrictive practice. If the banks start to crumble at the first shots from the ranks of the consumer army, what hope is there for other institutions? Professor Edward Chen Kwan-yiu, the Consumer Council Chairman, gave a welcome hint of further campaigning with fighting talk of a possible report into lawyers' fees and restrictions on the right of foreign lawyers to practise here. But he stopped short of committing himself. That is a pity. But when it comes to lawyers and their professional associations, even the most gung-ho crusader tends to think twice before engaging battle. To the layman, unversed in the black arts of the law, the legal profession appears to possess resources and powers verging on the occult. To have the Consumer Council battle on the public's behalf would give a measure of hope that something can at last be done to rein in the escalating legal fees for which the territory is becoming notorious.
Nor should such a report necessarily confine itself to legal fees and restrictions on foreign lawyers. Restrictive practices and traditions (including the rigid demarcation lines between barristers and solicitors) abound. They are defended with professional skill, occasionally against each other, by two of the tightest closed shops in business, the Bar Association and the Law Society. There might be good reasons for keeping a split profession but the set-up is inherently expensive and needs to be justified. And the profession's monopoly on conveyancing subjects the public to high fees and lays them open to sharks, such as those lawyers recently found to have bribed estate agents to push business their way.
The Consumer Council would win public support if it decided to take on the lawyers. The sooner it sets to work on a full-scale investigation, the better.
