New legal hotline launched to report bad lawyers

The initiative - a joint venture between the Law Society of South Africa and the Attorneys Fidelity Fund - allows members of the public to anonymously report any suspected unethical conduct by attorneys and their staff, including fraud, corruption and dishonesty.

The 24-hour toll-free hotline, known as Trustline, is aimed at improving trust between attorneys, their clients and the public. Attorneys in the past have been the butt of ridiculing jokes and have not always had a trustworthy reputation due to the bad apples in their midst.

Last year 72 attorneys were struck off the roll, up from 57 in 2011.

Law Society chairmen Kathleen Matolo-Dlepu and David Bekker said that, even though the number of practitioners involved in unethical behaviour was in the region of 0.3% of the country's 21 400 attorneys, this was "still too many" and these lawyers were a bad reflection for the entire legal profession.

Trustline runs independently from the profession and guarantees whistle-blowers confidentiality through auditing firm Deloitte's tip-offs anonymous system. Calls will be screened to separate malicious calls from genuine ones, which will be forwarded to the relevant provincial law society to investigate.

Source: The Times via I-Net Bridge