Patrick Gower: Argument for reform proved beyond doubt

Sometimes it is worth pleading guilty and getting it over. Then you can move on and make amends.

Lawyers should know this better than anyone.

But in the case of Dame Margaret Bazley and Justice Minister Simon Power versus The Profession, it has been anything but.

Dame Margaret delivered a withering indictment of the legal aid system, finding it sick from Wellington through to the lawyer on the courtroom floor.

Power took his cue - it is expected that the Cabinet will this week sign off his plan to shut down the Legal Services Agency and have its function taken over by the Ministry of Justice.

The swift closure of a Crown entity shows just how seriously Power has taken Dame Margaret's view that the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

But when it comes to the profession itself, similar admissions of guilt have been harder to find.

Dame Margaret and the minister have instead come up against those other legal stock-in-trades: Denial, mitigation and minimisation.

The Law Society had initially reacted to Dame Margaret by parroting the cliche that it "welcomed the report".

The line was obviously pre-prepared without knowing the sledgehammer she was going to deliver.

Dame Margaret referred to the Law Society as a "trade union" and held a view so low of lawyers' trustworthiness that she suggested posters be placed on the walls of courts telling people not to pay cash "top-ups".

The welcome has increasingly turned to resistance in the weeks since.

Dame Margaret left herself open for attack by citing an anonymous source in the report who said 80 per cent of lawyers at the Manukau District Court were gaming the system and then speculating to reporters that there could be 200 or more corrupt lawyers nationwide.

This has let lawyers dismiss her report and demand "concrete evidence".

The Auckland District Law Society even got personal last week, carrying a scathing attack in its newsletter from barrister Charles Cato that took a not-so-subtle dig at Power's lack of experience at the bar before he went into politics.

The debate has become mired in what Dame Margaret can or cannot prove in her report, which she admitted was based on anecdote. She has said what many others see in the court system: it has taken someone of her status to deliver it in the face of opposition.

What has been lost in the debate is Dame Margaret's most crucial finding - the utter malaise of the justice system.

Dame Margaret was clearly shocked by what she saw and heard as she travelled the country's courts and was regularly diverted from her brief on legal aid with her recommendations.

She suggested courthouse creches to spare children seeing their fathers sent to prison. Social agencies should be based in courts which were an ideal "interception point". Of concern to her was that amid the mess, the lessons from a court appearance - "one of life's most teachable moments" - were being lost.

Dame Margaret may have been loose on a couple of points and extra sharp with some of her criticism but Power is determined to reform the justice system and her report has given him renewed steel. He is Parliament's most focused legislator, as seen by the huge number of bills he has passed this year.

Lawyers and others involved with the courts would help their reputations by joining with him as part of the solution.

The diagnosis of courts in crisis does not need to be put on trial. The case for reform has been proved beyond reasonable doubt.