Is the Bar Council still functioning?

I hired a lawyer to represent me for a case. This lawyer was active in the Bar Council's directory when I hired her. I made an initial payment of RM13,000 for her to proceed.

After I made the payment, it became tough to contact her. She also did not make any progress with my case. Finally, she agreed to drop my case and return my initial payment in full within seven days.

After seven days, she stopped answering my calls and I did not receive my money. I made a report with the Bar Council's Associates and Solicitors Disciplinary Board (ASDB) and paid RM200.

When I lodged the report, ASDB staff who took my report told me that this lawyer was famous for cheating. Please note that at this point, her status was still marked as “Active” in the Bar Council directory making it easy for more people to fall prey to her scamming activities.

After almost one year, ASDB finally sent me a letter notifying that this lawyer had been struck off from the Bar Council registry for another cheating report lodged against her.

As such, the ASDB said it will no longer investigate my case and it will be kept only as KIV. I was told to contact the Bar Council to get my money back.

When contacted, the Bar Council informed me that I need to pay RM100 to submit my claim. They also will not reimburse legal fees. This means I will not get back the payment I made to that lawyer. The Bar Council advised me to try other means (whatever that means).

I cannot afford now to hire another lawyer to get my money back from the first lawyer. I also found a group of people (close to 50) who have been scammed by her.

One of the victims filed a civil suit against her but this lawyer did not turn up for the hearing. So the verdict was by default that she is guilty and needs to pay her victims back.

However, as this lawyer is not contactable, the victim now needs to incur more costs to collect the judgement, provided that the lawyer still has assets under her name.

If there has been a faster action by the Bar Council and the ASDB, they could have avoided this. The common excuse given by ASDB is that they have a lot of cases to process and that they don't have much power. I don't understand why have a tribunal when they claim that they don't have power.

I made a police report against the lawyer and the police told me to refer to Bar Council and ASDB. The ASDB tells me to get my refund from the Bar Council. The Bar Council says it won't refund legal fees.

So tell me, how do I get justice and how do I get my money back? Right now, the law in this country does not protect me. There are so many scam stories getting published on social media but the common thread in all these stories is that the victim does not get justice anywhere.

The Bar Council is so busy getting involved in politics and starting to neglect the wrongdoings within their ambit as a professional body regulating its members.

Perhaps its time that it starts looking at its own backyard to do some cleaning up. - Mkini