lawyers did not bother to talk to litigants. She said the Right to Information Act should be implemented in letter and spirit and whistleblowers must be protected.
Senior Advocate Hamid Khan demanded the bar eliminate all bogus law colleges which were preparing lawyers who were creating hurdle to speedy justice. He said senior lawyers should establish law firms and accommodate new lawyers for their training.
He demanded the LHC chief justice set up a case management system to ensure fixation of cases before judges in accordance with their expertise in specific fields. “For the purpose, case managers should be appointed,” he added. Lahore High Court Bar Association President Pir Masood Chishti said the real purpose of the bar was to struggle for the provision of justice to the masses. He said only judges and lawyers were considered critical parts of the justice system, ignoring litigants. He said the LHC had given an assurance to the LHC that it would not announce a strike.
A representative of the PbBC also announced that they had also decided not to go on strike in their five-year tenure.
Justice (r) Fakharunisa Khokhar said Pakistan is a poor country and a poor man has to sell ornaments of his wife or some of his belongings to reach court for justice. She asked the CJ to advise judges to listen to lawyers of the poor with patience.
As the chief guest, LHC CJ Manzoor Ahmed Malik said the conference was on the role of Punjab Bar Council for access to justice but everyone was making demands to him. He said representatives of lawyers, judges, police, jail authorities and prosecution were present in the conference but no one was representing litigants.
He said Pakistan had a good set-up laws but the question was how to implement them? He said it was the responsibility of elected representatives of lawyers to give suggestions in the regard.
He said the bar also should take steps to educate new lawyers about appearance in courts, in preparing cases and pleading their cases. He said lawyers and judges should respect each other. He said 90 percent lawyers were professionals and knew their decorum but three percent of them created problems. “Bars should control them,” he suggested. By making reforms in the case management system and devising some other policies, he was sure that by July 3, there would be no pending case from 2007.