Touts and ‘Touters’

Rudyard Kipling, in one of his famed story, wrote "lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world’, referring to a high class prostitute. Is prostitution the oldest profession in the world? Then what about the pimps and the agents who solicit clients for their women? So, one could argue that pimps and touts are as old as the oldest profession in the world.

For the last 40 years the lawyers have lamented over the manner in which the juniors and some seniors have been resorting to the unethical practice of touting. But, we know the only way to rid touts in the legal Profession is to apply literally what Shakespeare said in Henry the Sixth. Dick the butcher, an unknown character, mouths this line which has become famous, "The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers." If there is no legal profession there would not be a single law tout. Such was the bond between the legal profession and the touts. One of those who knew this very well was the former Minister of Justice Felix Dias Bandaranaike, who had taken up cudgels with the legal profession as his chosen messiah did not win the elections in spite of being supported by him and his government. He was hell bent on teaching these fellows a lesson or too. He knew the unholy relationship the black coated gentry had with the touts and the ‘Godaperakadoruwas’ so what did he do.? Instead of trying to prevent the relationship by legislations he tried to cultivate it. He thought that one way of teaching a lesson to those in the UNP legal colony was to introduce the concept of barefoot lawyers. Lawyers clerks to compete with their bosses in their own territory.

The reason for this anger was the person he had nominated for the post of President of the Bar Association, the Chairman of Ceylon Law Society, a seemingly very affable and lovable proctor, Mr. T. Shri Ramanathan had lost to the brother of JRJ, H.W. Jayewardene.

Felix had been addressing a number of public rallies and had told the people that they should emulate Chairman Mao of China. Mao said he had a fine solution to prevent the capitalist roaders from taking control of the State and the medical profession was one of the biggest counter revolutionary groups, that in order to prevent the over dependence of the State on those western educated doctors, who insist upon prescribing drugs and are beholden to Allopathic medicine and the western system, he introduced the concept of barefoot doctors. When Chairman Mao decided that there should be barefoot doctors, who would treat millions of Chinese who did not have money to even to travel to cities to obtain medicines from the Government Hospitals, unlike Felix, his (Mao’s) word was law and he was more powerful than many of the gods that we pray to. But millions of Chinese people were diagnosed wrongly by these Quacks and their illness resulted in death. No one would even whisper about the tragedy that was taking place before their own eyes. Mao was God !

Similarly, Felix said he had a prescription to eliminate the blood sucking lawyers from becoming gargantuan Draculas in the future.

Instead, of the barefoot doctors, we should have barefoot lawyers and we could appoint lawyers clerks as pleaders. These so called clerks were qualified touts of the respective lawyers. Felix said they could even do better than the lawyers as the lawyers themselves got their work done by those so called lawyers’ clerks, Many lawyers refused to live without them. The Minister had found this weakness in the legal profession and had a meeting of lawyers’ clerks. He chaired the meeting in the capacity of Minister of Justice. Some of the clerks were very eloquent in the Sinhala Language and spoke with great authority and said that their own bosses would never ever be able to live without their support. So, under the Socialist regime, we could halve the fees charged by the lawyers if they, the clerks were permitted to appear in Court and the said legal services would be less burdensome to the public at large. Then the Minsiter of Justice, Felix Dias Bandarnaike would be up held as a champion of the litigants were the sentiments expressed by the touts at this meeting.

Minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike was so taken up by the praise heaped upon him by the sycophants that he permitted them to form an Association and ordered that they be issued with an Identity Card through the Ministry of Justice so that they could enter the Court House without any hindrance. When this was happening, especially in Colombo, the Colombo Magistrates’ Court Lawyers’ Association had taken a decision not to permit any lawyer’s clerk or the glorified touts to enter the premises. Several Magistrates and Chief Magistrates took this move seriously and did not hesitate to fine them under the "inter-meddler Ordinance". The clerks who were bolstered and buyoed by the patronage given by the most powerful Minister of the Sirima Bandaranaike government, Felix Dias, decided even to go beyond the Ministers agenda and formed themselves into an Association and registered a Law Firm, registered with the registrar of companies and employed several junior lawyers, who had come from the villages expecting to be millionaires overnight and were drifting from court to court in search of clients and work.

They were trapped by the formidable lawyers’ clerks’ association and were made their employees. The drafting and other paper work was done by the Clerks’ Assocation and the lawyers filed proxies and appeared in court on behalf of clients of clerks. The Managing Director of this firm was a clerk to a famous lawyer. The clerk had employed 4-5 attorneys and a number of typists. It was a thriving business and some lawyers who did not want to compromise their integrity lost their clients and went outstation. Thereafter, as expected the lawyers’ clerks went onto another level and charged exorbitant fees and gave the lawyers a pittance for appearing in the case, whereas the drafting and preparation of documents were done by them.

Felix Dias was very happy until he found a note sent through his peon to his office stating that the head of the Lawyers’ Clerks’ Association had charged a heavy fee from the petitioner to obtain a divorce from his wife and that when the summons went to his wife, others in the office had approached her and told her the matter could be settled in her favour and the Petitioner did not know who was appearing for whom.

Felix Dias did not have the time to inquire into this. Later, there was a news item that the Chairman of the Lawyers’ Clerks’ Association had disappeared from home never to be seen again. Then there was a rumour that the person who had sent the note to Felix Dias about the manner in which his divorce case was handled, happened to be an Army Officer and that he had abducted the Chairman of the Lawyers’ Clerks’ Association.

This matter came to the attention of the Felix Dias Bandaranaike by then he was out of power. the Legal Profession and the Bar Association found that there were no Rules of Conduct or Ethics, binding the lawyers, which would prevent them from touting and other bad practices. Mr. W.P. Gunathilake, one of the most hard working Secretaries of the Bar Association, decided to appoint a Committee which would ultimately draft the Rules and the Code of Conduct, which clearly defines what touting was, and if lawyers resorted to touting that they could be removed from the Role of Attorneys. Even today, the Code that had been drafted by that Committee, with minor amendments, were adopted as the rules of the Supreme Court. It is my duty to mention the name of Chief Justice Sharvananda and Mr. Lal Peiris, the then Secretary of Justice Minister, who was instrumental in the supreme court adopting the set of of rules adopted as the ‘Rules of the Supreme Court’.