How to stop lawyers cheating on clients' monies?

robertteh SG

If a government openly is seen to be unable to practise fairness and equity in nation building e.g. buying of votes with free monies and promises of estate upgrading to its own supporters in electioneering, will it still possess the moral authority to tell their lawyers to do likewise and stay honest and not to cheat clients?

Leaders have been telling people to make the economy competitive by practising flexible or variable wage. Have they themselves shown willingness to practise variable wages.

Have they set high moral and ethical standards ? Will it work if the leaders keep preaching people to be honest and they themselves are unwilling to be honest in election campaigning or accept variable wage system. Can they then expect the lawyers to be honest with clients' monies?

Before they expect the lawyers, architects, engineers, auditors, accountants and professionals to be honest, should they themslves be prepared to be honest.

They say variable wage is good. If they believe it to be good can they set the minister's 1st $20,000 of monthly salaries to be the fixed component and the remaining $120,000 to be set as variable component which will be payable on good performance and witheld like in the NKF case or where the MOM fail to achieve the job creation target as announced.

Citizens' wages have been dropping since 1970s while ministers' and civil lords' salaries kept increasing bucking the trend. They even get bonuses when most of the private sector employees did not even even one month as bonus for the past many years.

So how can they expect all the professionals to practise honesty and integrity if the leaders can legalistically take any amount of salaries or bonuses just by going to parliament to pass any motion they like to get all such rewards.

If they cannot practise the above-stated leadership by example, will they succeed in persuading the professionals to do so. Are the leaders sincere in wanting to build a honest administration or are they merely wishy washy and full of hot-airs. I think this is what the professionals are thinking now about ministers' asking citizens to make their low wages even lower by making them flexible while the ministers are enjoying their own highest salaries and highest bonuses for efforts put in by citizens' taxes.

All the professionals must now be asking after recent election buying of votes and estate upgrading tiff with PP and HG: "If they can do what they like with their own clients' monies why can't we do the same with our clients' monies...catch us if you can."

robertteh SG

szhcornan73 wrote:
Make Laywer pay deposit to guarantee their conduct to gov? Something like each lawyer firm that handles client monies must pay no. of lawyer X $1million each to the gov for safe keeping of conduct?

The last thing we ever want to happen to us is lawyer cheating us...

I don't think this is the best solution. If the top beam is not straight the framework will be slanted or crooked too. Men will obey laws willingly if there is a supportive ingrained cultural element in the community's laws and customs to make men live honestly. All the laws and enforcements may come to naught one day if there is no such maturity.

We have built everything legalistically for too long and it does not look like we have become a better society. We have internal social turmoil where people do not bother with morality and ethics. Lawyers have been fined and gone to jail before for cheating on clients and so many law firms have closed down due to government megalomania with bigness of everything.

By increasing more laws and enforcements of deposits more law firms will have to close to make the existing law firms more monopolisitc and charge higher fees. Professional fidelity insurance and similar policies might be better than deposit. But the better solution especially after what has happened in the recent buying of votes and electioneering use of public fund for upgrading to win votes the real solution will be starting at the top or at the fundamentals.

Lowclassman SG

+1 Smile Well done! In chinese proverbs: Shang liang bu zhen sia liang whye.

This world is full of evil!!!

dragg SG

a lawyer just absconded with 10 million.

ditzy SG

I believe that's what spurred this thread. Laughing

Ah Cek SG

a few similar cases in the past. still happening…haiz

Fatum SG

well ... blood-suck .... sorry, I mean lawyers, are in a basically parasitic profession, so is it any surprise, really ? .... Laughing

banzie SG

The only way to stop it is only to stop the clients from letting the guard down.

fudgester SG

There's only so much that the clients can do to prevent their money from getting embezzled.

Of course no client is going to hand over huge sums of money without so much as getting a record of the transaction. But once the money is with the firm, you can't expect the clients to keep track of every single thing the firm does with the money.

After all, the lawyer in question does have a sound record and has taken a few high-profile cases before. I remember reading a newspaper article on this; one of the lawyer's friends said that he was easily worth more than the $10 million he disappeared with.

oxford mushroom SG

There will always be criminals in any society. Tough laws and professional fidelity insurance is the way to go. I don’t see this as a reason to criticize the government.

dragg SG

CJ is the one who suggested tighter controls.

kilua SG

I think this is how the government will reply. They will say if you compare to places like Indonesia or Philippines, the money is not a lot and the frequency is low, so there is nothing to worry about. We should be grateful that we are so lucky, and not complain

dragg SG

all typed out from a template?

oxford mushroom SG

I agree with tighter controls and stricter laws but there will still be criminals who would test the system.

To protect the victims, all lawyers must purchase some form of insurance that will make good the loss in such cases. If their insurance premiums go up, that's because they have too many bad apples within their own ranks. It would be in their interest to be even more vigilant to prevent such frauds in future.

And maybe it's time to introduce the death penalty for fraud exceeding a million dollars...

Atobe SG

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:

I agree with tighter controls and stricter laws but there will still be criminals who would test the system.

To protect the victims, all lawyers must purchase some form of insurance that will make good the loss in such cases. If their insurance premiums go up, that's because they have too many bad apples within their own ranks. It would be in their interest to be even more vigilant to prevent such frauds in future.

And maybe it's time to introduce the death penalty for fraud exceeding a million dollars...

Extreme thoughts in overkill, or creative flights of fantasy ?

How does anyone fathom someone's mind to sense the ill-intention that is intended ?

Perhaps a sniffer at the door, that picks-up the body odour of some chemical whiff that indicates "ill-intention in the air" ?

Shall we have a society of snoops, everyone picking through the thrash of our neighbors; the banker to report to Big Brother each time our account fall below a certain legislated level for every Citizen ?

dragg SG

in the lastest case the lawyer allegedly absconded with 10 million, leaving behind his wife and 3 kids. why?

why not bring the family along?

mistyblue SG

maybe have mistress outside???

mistyblue SG

its a bit broad and not to forget some m.mentos ....

robertteh SG

Citizens indeed may need lawyers' services to do many things e.g.

(1) Fighting for our justice when we are deprived, wrongly accused or exploited unfairly by powerful monopolies or evil forces.
(2) Establish rule of laws, by upholding the constitutions to better assure the citizens to take part in contributing to nation building and and their individual freedoms and rights to elect their best representatives to govern the country, etc etc.
(3) Establish greater accountability and transparency in all aspects of governance of the country and trade and commerce to protect citizens of unfairness, iniquities, evil and wrong doings etc.

Today, look around our society for (1) to (4). Do our lawyers and law makers help us to achieve our objectives in nation building or are we getting worse.

Let us look at some recent occurrences to see whether they may be positive or negative to the evolvement of our society and nation building.

Is our society being over-dominated by lawyers or lawyers' involvements in government. For example, let us examine the following trends or occurrences:-

(1) More lawyers are monopolising commerce and industries e.g. conveyancing of real estates are being successfully done by more open and cheaper alternative system as practised in US and UK or Japan e.g. realtors can register conveyancing by relatively hassle-free processes without being compelled to pay 2-4% scale fees being protected by our pro-lawyer system for years.

(2) Gerrymandering and passing of more control laws relating to commerce and economy affecting entrepreneurship and free market system and running down our economic competitiveness. Is this not the result of lawyer's legalistic shallow or short-sighted control thinking.

(3) Gerrymandering and passing of more controls and regulations affecting basic rights and freedoms of citizens stated in the constitution thereby underming their freedom to choose and elect their best representatives to parliaments in the freest manner under one-man-one-vote system.

(4) More lawyer MPs are being brought in in every election by the ruling party as if only the lawyers know how to represent the people's rights and interests.

(5) Lawyers are being engaged to run top jobs in government and NGOs like the NKF resulting in legalistically managing organization to suit narraw legalistic control purposes which are counter to larger needs and aspirations of the public or citizens.

(6) Lawyers engaged in large nos. in public sector to provide greater justice, equity and accountability by the government. But despite investing so much on lawyers are citizens getting better lives and more social and economic progressions. Are we becoming a better society with lesser defamation litigations to suit narrow ends of people in power. Are we having more conscientious leaders who could prevent us from falling into dangers of narrow controls or abolition of trial of facts by internationally acceptable and equitable Jury system thereby giving full power to politicians to enforce their narrow agendas on the whole nation.

(7) Lawyers are supposed to represent us for justice and settle inquitable commerce or contractual rights but are seen to be frequently involved in running away with clients' monies with hardly any protection measures in place as found in other countries.

( Cool Lawyers in public sector seem to be running us more and more in a legalistic system whereby for as long as laws can be passed by fellow MPs in parliaments, the government can do anything it likes e.g. ministers can by legalistic system of government decide they want more salaries can get the highest salaries and any amounts of bonuses they like without batting an eyelid or worrying about citizens' plights and suffering. (20% of population are living below poverty line)

If more lawyers running the country means more restrictions and less freedoms and choices and more legalistic manoerving to serve control purposes, why do we want to have more lawyer MPs or lawyer CEOs in high places so at the end we will be less well off.

dragg SG

he gave his employees 6 - 8 months of bonus before he went missing.

Surprised