Government drafts bill to regulate lawyers and establish 'bar council'

The government has drafted a bill to regulate those in the legal profession and is working to push it to the parliament floor, says Attorney General Mohamed Anil.

Anil said, speaking at an event to confer practicing licenses to law graduates, that the bill will have a bar council established to regulate the conduct of local lawyers.

The attorney general said that the bill, when passed, will see several changes brought to the legal industry and that future graduates will have to be admitted to the aforesaid Bar in order to be licensed to practice.

Anil further said that such a law has 'long been needed' in the Maldives and that it was delayed for a host of reasons, though he did not elaborate on any of them.

Addressing the graduates at Sunday night’s event, Anil said that the mandate of lawyers in the Maldives is ‘broad and far reaching’ and goes beyond ‘simply appearing in court before a judge’.

In this regard, Anil encouraged potential graduates to delve into investigative positions in civil service.

Lawyers in the Maldives have been regulated by a number of statutory bodies and courts through the years. Conventionally, the authority to certify lawyers was vested with the Justice Ministry, then with the Attorney General’s Office, and now with the Supreme Court.