Parliament stirs controversy over lawyers’ law amendments

CAIRO – 17 May 2017:Signs of conflict and dissent were foreboded at the Egyptian parliament after Deputy Speaker Soliman Wahdan submitted on May 7 a proposal suggesting some amendments to the Law No. 17 of 1983 that attempts at regulating the legal profession. The submission was made without consulting the Lawyer's Syndicate.

Parliamentarian Ahmed Helmy al-Sherif, the deputy of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, said that the aforementioned draft law aims at restructuring the Lawyers Syndicate and setting new conditions for membership of the syndicate board. He added that the current law has loopholes which required urgent amendments to protect the lawyers.

The bill obligates those who seek to renew their membership of the syndicate to attend a number of consecutive sessions to ensure that all the members are actually practicing the profession, Sherif stressed. He noted that the Legislative Committee of the Parliament has held several meetings with lawyers for consultancy over the new bill, expecting that the committee would discuss it within this week.

Several parliamentarians argued that the current law was issued more than 25 years ago and that it should be amended to cope with the development of the community.

On the other hand, the president of the Lawyers Syndicate, Sameh Ashour, disapproved of the new amendments, refuting the parliament’s claims about consulting with the syndicate in this regard.

The proposal, of which Egypt Today obtained a copy, has amendments to 17 articles regulating the registry of lawyers, the formation of the syndicate’s council, and the discrediting the president of the syndicate.

According to the new amendments, the Committee for the Acceptance of Lawyers, already entitled to register new lawyers, shall be allowed to register foreign lawyers in addition to Egyptian ones.

The bill also stipulates that a lawyer may neither be investigated nor his office be inspected for crimes of defamation, insult, and libel during the practice of or by reasons of fulfilling professional duties referred to in the law. This privilege can only be removed if the investigation is carried out by a member of the public prosecution or an investigation judge, according to the recent amendments.

Moreover, upon convening an extraordinary general meeting in order to discredit the president or one or more of the syndicate’s board members, the number of attendants in the meeting must not be less than one third of the votes, or the member who is to be disbarred, in order to be valid, according to the amendments.

The original law stipulates that the extraordinary general meeting held to discredit the president or one or more of the syndicate’s board members, requires at least 1,500 members of the syndicate to be present, in order to be valid.

The syndicate’s board is composed of a president and 28 other lawyers, at least half of whom are acknowledged before the Court of Cassation and Courts of Appeal, while the original law stipulates that the syndicate’s board shall be comprised of a president and 24 other lawyers.

In addition, the original law stipulates that the board of directors of the syndicate create an institute for training lawyers under apprenticeship. The new bill mandates that this institute shall be chaired by the president of the syndicate, and the membership of at least 10 lawyers, half of whom are acknowledged before the Court of Cassation.

The bill also stipulates that the head of the branch syndicate is a lawyer practicing the profession independently and acknowledged before the Court of Cassation for 20 consecutive years.