New Delhi: What a lawyer charges a client remains largely unregulated in India. The advocates’ fees rules are only for guidance and there is no bar to money claimed beyond what is fixed under the rules. The Supreme Court favours a law to check growing commercialisation of the legal profession and to “prescribe floor and ceiling in fees” to ensure the poor were not nudged out of the justice delivery system. Expressing concern over lawyers demanding “astronomical” fees from litigants, the top Court on Tuesday asked the Government to ensure that the poor too could get legal assistance from the best lawyers so that their right to equal justice was not violated. The legal profession should make its services available to the needy on the lines of State-run hospitals, a bench of Justice A.K. Goel and Justice U.U. Lalit said. “It was observed that like public hospitals for medical services, the public sector should have a role in providing legal services for those who cannot afford fee,” the bench said, citing the 131st Law Commission report.
