Table of Contents
How Do Lawyers Exploit Clients?
Why are lawyers able to charge extremely high hourly rates?
How Do Lawyers Overcharge Clients?
How Do Lawyers Make a Lot of Money by Creating Disputes?
How Do Lawyers Push Clients into Lawyer-Controlled Scams?
What did a judge secretly tell law students?
What did the Chief Justice say about affordable access to justice?
Why Are Lawyers Able to Get Away with Unacceptable Charges and Behaviour?
Do Lawyers Scam the Government So That You End Up Paying More in Tax or
Having Reduced Public Services?
How Have Lawyers Blocked Affordable Access to Justice Reforms?
How Do Lawyers Exploit Clients?
The information below is a brief summary of research carried out over several decades. It draws on the personal experiences of those who have been victims of lawyers and quotes the views of some judges and lawyers who have privately expressed their concerns about what goes on. All lawyers know about the following scams but they have chosen to do nothing about them and put their personal greed and self-interest ahead of the need for justice FOR the rest of the community.
Lawyers restrict competition in order to charge excessive hourly rate fees plus extra charges for skill, responsibility, importance etc. The standard Terms of Engagement and invoicing used by lawyers are unacceptable by normal standards.
When you seek the advice of a lawyer you are charged high HOURLY RATE fees for information that should be freely available online, as should templates for any documents you might require. Lawyers should only provide advice on legal technicalities and do final checks but they take on work that you could do and then charge up to about $500 per hour. Often this is work that they get low paid new graduates or office staff to do. Another problem is that lawyers do not have the inside knowledge that you do and can easily leave out vital facts and make mistakes. They expect you to bear the cost of their errors.
Most people are reasonable and want to avoid disputes but once they have paid for legal advice and been told that they will be better off by creating a dispute, they feel obliged to take that advice. Lawyers advise clients to not co-operate in resolving a problem and to not pay or do what they have previously agreed to do. This is done in order to widen a dispute and cause problems for the other party. The result is far higher fees for all the lawyers involved.
Lawyers create money making family disputes involving separations, wills etc without regard to how these destroy family relationships.
Research shows that the disputes created by lawyers result in psychological trauma leading to mental illness, family breakups, bankruptcy and other problems but lawyers have no concern for the damage done by their money making scams.
Lawyers usually take a simple dispute and turn it into a long, drawn out, complicated and expensive dispute and they extract as much money as possible before moving on to the next dispute?
Judges and lawyers know that most people cannot afford to get access to the current civil justice system if they have a significant problem. Judges also have been quoted as saying that the courts do not ascertain the truth and deliver a just result. Despite this lawyers have blocked all attempts to bring in a far better and cheaper justice system similar to that operated in European countries. This is because lawyers would lose a lot of money.
Ancient rules and rituals are retained by lawyers to create unnecessary work and prevent self-representation by members of the public.
Lawyers have created monopolies for themselves by writing into law requirements that only some work can be performed by them and that some documents can only be signed off by them. They have made simple tasks into something complex by introducing complicated steps and difficult to understand language.
While you might think that the lawyer you have dealt with is a nice person who wants to help you, you cannot tell to what extent they intend to exploit you. They will put their interest in making as much money as possible ahead of doing what is in your best interests. All lawyers know about what goes on in the legal industry but, even if they have concerns, they are not prepared to speak out. This is because of their unwritten rule of ‘First do no harm to other lawyers’. Any lawyer who challenges the establishment is likely to lose their job or the chance of becoming a partner or a judge. They are also likely to be ostracised at Law Society functions. While lawyers may privately denounce some of what goes on, they do nothing about it so are ‘ accessories after the fact ‘and are just as guilty as other lawyers.
A strategy called ‘delay, deny and defend’ is used by lawyers for those who want to destroy a weaker party and escape their legal obligations.
Those organisations that dishonestly create a dispute following legal advice, are well rewarded for doing so when decisions are made. This is at the expense of an innocent party and the aim is to encourage more money making disputes for lawyers to exploit.
Lawyers representing an innocent party who has been dragged into a lawyer created dispute, actually foremost represent the interests of the litigation industry and all the lawyers involved in the dispute and not the interests of their client.
Those who do try to get justice often end up with their savings, health and lives ruined before they are forced by lawyers to give up.
Some former lawyers say that many lawyers lack ethics and arrange their activities so that they are above the law and cannot suffer repercussions.
The legislated self-regulation arranged by lawyers, without any transparency, accountability and independent oversight, allows them to get away with what others could not do.
The Human Rights Commission recognises that access to justice is a human right but they have failed to take action against the legal industry.
Why are lawyers able to charge extremely high hourly rates?
Lawyers restrict competition and block access to justice reforms so that they can charge excessive hourly rates.
Lawyers make clients agree to the Terms of Engagement that have been designed by the N Z Law Society to help lawyers to make as much money as possible. On top of their extremely high hourly rates, under rule 9.1 of the Law Society’s Conduct and Client Care Rules, lawyers can also charge for the following:
- The complexity of the matter
- The skill, specialised knowledge, and experience required
- The responsibility involved
- The importance of the matter to you and the results achieved
- The urgency of the matter
- The circumstances in which the services were provided.
These rules show that the extremely high hourly rates charged by lawyers are just the start and lawyers can charge what they like. No lawyer engaging a tradesman or professional would find the same type of Terms of Engagement acceptable but lawyers regard themselves as being in an elite class of their own where normal standards do not apply.
The work done by architects and engineers is not work that the average person could do but their hourly rates are far lower than those of lawyers. Unlike lawyers, they take responsibility for the mistakes they make and do not expect clients to pay for any extra remedial costs.
Lawyers should face the same sort of competition that Chartered Accountants face from unqualified accountants and accounting software packages. Architects have competition from architectural draughtsmen.
Insurance companies and other large organisations who allow lawyers to create many disputes for them are only charged about two thirds per hour what the average person is charged.
The Government knows that lawyers massively overcharge so they only pay legal aid hourly rates that are about one third to a half of what you are charged. Most lawyers refuse to do legal aid work because they say the rates are too low. The real problem is that the rates normally charged by lawyers are far too high.
The average person could do most of the work done by lawyers so there is no justification for their excessive fees. However, lawyers have used complex and obscure language and a variety of techniques to deter the public from trying to do the work themselves. The use of AI by the public could in future avoid the need to seek legal advice from a lawyer.
Universities fail to train law graduates to be work ready. This is to prevent them competing with existing law firms and thereby cutting hourly rate fees in half. Academics are required by legislation to act as the ‘ critic and conscience of society ‘ but law school staff are not concerned that most people cannot afford access to justice due to excessively high fees.
Each year about 800 law graduates, who have been educated at taxpayer expense and who could provide the public with much cheaper legal services,
are denied employment by law firms. This is because senior lawyers restrict access to the law business so that they can maintain their extremely high incomes.
Those graduates who get internships have to show that they lack morals, ethics honesty and integrity and will do anything to get ahead. The news media has reported that some intern graduates had sex on the boardroom table with senior lawyers, presumably because they wanted to get a job and become rich lawyers.
Those lawyers who get a job in a law firm have to pay for a practicing certificate. New Zealand has a far higher number of practicing lawyers per head of population than most other countries. Since the 1960’s the number of lawyers per head of population has tripled. Clearly, lawyers have greatly expanded the work they force clients to pay for at excessively high rates
Businesses charge customers hourly rates about double the hourly rates they pay staff but lawyers charge up to 8 times what they pay their staff. They copy one or more staff members into emails so that they can each charge an hourly rate and get a share of the spoils.
How Do Lawyers Overcharge Clients?
Lawyers use block charging that does not reveal how long each task has taken and who did the work. Extra work and disputes are created to make more money. Work done by junior lawyers on low pay is charged out at high rates. Judges say that advice can be given that is in the best interests of the lawyer and not the client.
Young graduates are paid a salary and can then be worked very long hours so that they end up with below the minimum hourly wage rate. Senior lawyers pretend that they have done the work and charge out at high rates. Some are reputed to have incomes of over $1,000,000 an others are on the Rich List.
When invoices are sent out they do not state who did the work and the time taken for each task and the hourly rate. As the simplest of tasks can be made very complicated, it is impossible to know whether the charge made is reasonable.
It might appear, for example, that a lawyer has prepared a complex contract document but in reality a clerk has filled in one of the many template forms that lawyers have available and the lawyer has quickly checked it.
Lawyers copy other lawyers into emails and get them to attend meetings and hearings so their charges can also be included. Any competent lawyer charging excessive hourly rates should be able to do the work alone.
Lawyers get into pointless email arguments with lawyers in other firms and so create extra work for themselves.
Lawyers can charge high hourly rates for basic administration tasks performed by office staff.
Some lawyers engage in over-servicing — performing more work than is needed to resolve a matter. This might include drafting multiple versions of documents,
holding unnecessary meetings, or continuing to bill after the main issue has been resolved.
Disbursements like third-party costs should be charged at cost but may have margins added.
Under Australian law, lawyers must provide cost disclosures in
plain English and charge only what is fair and reasonable but New zealand does not have the same legislation.
You will be asked to check the work done by your lawyer because they can easily get things wrong and they want you to be ultimately responsible for any mistakes that they make. Lawyers will always expect you to pay to correct their mistakes and to meet the costs arising from delays they create.
How Do Lawyers Make a Lot of Money by Creating Disputes?
The litigation industry and litigation processes are a mixture of moral and immoral, ethical and unethical, honest and dishonest, true and false, right and wrong, accurate and inaccurate, complete and incomplete, complex and simple, biased and unbiased, considered and ill considered, fair and unfair, just and unjust. There is nothing about the industry and the way lawyers operate in it which is satisfactory so big changes are needed.
Lawyers are more interested in looking after each other than doing the right thing by their clients and the community. Lawyers have known for decades that most people cannot afford to take a case to court and if they have a problem with a family dispute, insurance company, builder or large organisation they are forced to take whatever is offered to them. If they do try going to court then the lawyers make the process so long, stressful and financially crippling that they are forced to give up. Lawyers refer to this as burning off the weaker party.
Professor Mark Henaghan of the Auckland University Law School has said “large companies sometimes acted on legal advice and used drawn out, costly and stressful legal processes to try to force those with fewer resources to give up and accept a low settlement. This is known as “burning off” but I do not regard it as ethical behaviour.”
A retired litigation lawyer said privately that the clients he liked best were those who said what had happened to them was morally wrong because this meant that they were prepared to spend everything they had in a vain attempt to get justice before being advised by him to give up and settle.
A former litigation lawyer has said publicly that lawyers do whatever they know that they can get away with; “The profession appears to attract personalities who believe they can act without repercussions.” ‘Lawyers and law firms are meant to be the gatekeepers of ethics – that’s why they have gotten away with it for so long they are beyond reproach. They are literally above the law and no-one is watching them.’
The legal process can involve criminal court processes where a jury of ordinary people determines whether a person has done wrong and then a judge imposes a penalty. With civil litigation lawyers have arranged for the opposite to happen. This involves a judge or arbitrator dealing with a dispute in order to reward the party that has done wrong and has created a dispute. The aim is to encourage many more disputes for lawyers to exploit. If you are the innocent party in a dispute that has been deliberately created by lawyers and has to be dealt with in a court case or by lawyer controlled arbitration, the chance of you getting justice and not losing any money are nil.
When the ACC started keeping lawyers out of disputes, the disputes were resolved within a few weeks at minimal cost instead of previously taking up to 7 years at a huge cost.
Lawyers can make a lot of money by spending many years gathering evidence and preparing for a hearing but when it gets near they may not be keen on having their other work disrupted for many days or weeks so they recommend a settlement using mediation. This could have happened at the outset but there is little money to be made by doing that. The mediation can involve a gradual splitting of the difference until the innocent party loses a substantial part of their claim. They also get no compensation for legal fees, lost interest and the time they have put into trying to get a fair result. They cannot blame any of the lawyers involved for the outcome because they are required to make the final decision.
A court case that takes many days or weeks is very expensive but a judge will not prepare a decision until many months after they have forgotten what was said at the hearing. They may have a few rough notes but that is not adequate and the time delay would be regarded as completely unacceptable in any other situation. The long delay does provide the excuse for improper decision-making that ignores the ultimate outcome and is in the best interests of the lawyers involved and the litigation industry . As lawyers want to make as much money as possible and have been trained to not be concerned about justice, they are happy to go along with this.
Centuries ago illiterate peasants needed legal representation but today people are educated and capable of representing themselves. If a lot of outdated traditions, rituals and jargon were eliminated from court proceedings and people representing themselves were given a set of rules to follow, the majority of people would be able to better present their own case than a lawyer with only a passing interest and knowledge of the facts. The Disputes Tribunal processes are based on self-representation but the cap that lawyers have arranged to be put on the amount involved should be removed.
How Do Lawyers Push Clients into Lawyer-Controlled Scams?
Organisations representing lawyers have created agreements, contracts and other documents frequently used by lawyers and have included in these documents a requirement that any dispute has to be settled by arbitration and not by a Court. This allows lawyers to extend disputes over many years and charge as much as they can get away with. They encourage dishonest parties to create disputes by promising that they will be rewarded for doing so. The lawyers involved usually appoint a retired judge or retired barrister as arbitrator. This person is often in their seventies or eighties and may live in a retirement village or rest home. Like most elderly people, from the age of 50 onwards they have declining memory and cognitive ability. They get the work if they have the reputation for looking after the litigation industry and rewarding the party who creates a dispute. In return they receive $500 to $1,000 per hour. If they make major factual errors that cost an innocent party a huge amount of money, nothing can be done about it. Lawyers have arranged for the Arbitration Act to say that factual errors cannot be appealed so the person making the ‘error’ to reward the creator of a dispute cannot be shown up.
The secret Arbitration Act process prevents anyone getting to know about the shortcomings and failures of an arbitrator and the unacceptable things that the lawyers involved get up to.
Lawyers are officers of the court so in court cases they are not allowed to mislead the court. In the uncontrolled and secret arbitration industry they should not be allowed to continue making false statements misrepresenting situations and leaving out important facts which do not suit the case they are trying to make. They should not be permitted to get witnesses who have major conflicts of interest to say things which are clearly untrue. Under normal circumstances, anyone with a conflict of interest is expected to declare it but lawyers choose to ignore this because these witnesses help create money making disputes for all the lawyers involved.
Lawyers have created provisions in the Arbitration Act to help them make a lot of money and to reward dishonest parties who go along with creating money making disputes. This is done at the expense of innocent people who lawyers are unlikely to be able to make any more money out of in future.
Cases that are settled by arbitration cannot be reported on so no precedent cases are created. Therefore, each case should be decided on the basic facts and the document that the parties read and signed up to. This does not happen because the arbitrator has to muddy the waters and use other means to reward the creator of a dispute. These include using decisions from cases about different issues from different countries and different eras going back as far as 200 years ago. The fact that these cases are not relevant and the parties had no knowledge of them is ignored. The arbitrator can quote the Arbitration Act and other acts and rely on witnesses that clearly have a huge conflict of interest. In criminal cases those who have done bad things by failing to do what they are required to do and have told lies are penalised but in disputes and arbitration the opposite happens and they are rewarded.
The parties who signed a document should be bound by what they read and signed up to unless essential information was withheld. If there are no directly relevant precedent cases, then ancient cases from a different era and country with different facts should not be used to distort the decisions made.
Lawyers are not involved in the Tenancy Tribunal so it can award an innocent party exemplary damages for all the extra work they have been forced to do, the financial and other sacrifices and for the trauma involved but arbitration does not allow for this type of compensation.
The arbitrator can quote from the false and misleading submissions of lawyers who can get away with doing this due to the secret arbitration process. The end result is that an arbitrator ignores the basic facts that would require a just decision and instead they reward the dishonest creator of a dispute in the hope that they will be encouraged to create more money making disputes for lawyers and arbitrators.
In arriving at a decision long after a hearing, all the evidence and documents that do not suit the required outcome are ignored.
Lawyers have contempt for justice because they do nothing about the fact that most people are prevented from seeking justice due to lawyer’s excessively high fees. They block attempts to improve access to justice so that they can maintain their extremely high incomes. The old sayings about ‘ justice delayed is justice denied’ and ‘Justice must not only be done but must also be seen to be done’ are treated with contempt. The Arbitration Act has provisions that prevent the dishonest and unethical activities of lawyers in a particular case being made public. As a result they are free to scam and defraud with impunity. Even if court action could be taken against them, a judge is likely to have had a long history of doing the same things so would not criticise or penalise them.
Innocent parties are dragged into a dispute and then stripped of their available assets and forced to give in when their money runs out. Anyone going to lawyer controlled arbitration is exploited by being charged huge fees over many years. The lawyers make a lot of money by arguing with each other and creating delays to give the impression that they are doing a lot of work.
An innocent party can lose a lot of interest on money that has been outstanding for many years . They are made to pay half the substantial cost of arbitration, even though they did not create the dispute. They are only awarded part of what they have been forced to pay out.
Statements of Claim were once a one page summary of what was being claimed but researchers were told that during the Global Financial Crisis Court staff found that Statements of Claim had expanded to up to 50 pages or more and stayed that way ever since. Law school staff kept this out of their report because it showed how lawyers exploit clients.
The discovery of documents process can cost over $1,000,000 but it is largely a waste of time and money because dishonest parties are not going to put forward documents that show them up. Research shows that there are big differences between what different lawyers decide is discoverable.
One well documented example of arbitration is where lawyers conspired to defraud a charitable trust of $2.6 million in order to reward a large creator of disputes. All the lawyers involved charged fees totalling over $2.7 million so this was a good outcome from a legal perspective.
What did a judge secretly tell law students?
In 2006 Sir John Hansen, who had been a judge for 27 years, gave a lecture at Otago University to law students on access to justice. He said that the vast majority of people could not afford to get access and for those who tried he said:‘ I imagine that the public at large would think the object of trials would be to ascertain the truth and to arrive at a just result. But our adversarial system is not designed for that.’ You may well ask what then is it designed for. The answer quite clearly is that it is designed to help lawyers make as much money as possible. The law is now a business where the aim is to make maximum profits.
Sir John said: ‘At long last we need to confront a conflict that has always been inherent in legal practice. That is the conflict of the need of a lawyer to make a living and the interest of the client. They do not always coincide. The best answer for the client does not always maximise fees. I suspect much modern civil litigation culture is fee-driven. The law is no longer a profession – it is a business.’
‘The cost of reasonable representation can lead to financial ruin. The horror stories surrounding costs that are the standard fare of legal gossip are too numerous to warrant enumeration here, but the level of litigation cost is notorious.’
Sir John commented on the impact on the parties involved by saying ‘The effect of delay on the participants in the court process is all too frequently
overlooked by Judges and lawyers. Not only are there significant financial costs (both direct, in terms of legal fees; and indirect, in terms of management costs, lost
opportunities and such like), but the associated anxiety is with most litigants as long as the litigation continues. We all too frequently overlook, or ignore, the financial and
psychological cost of litigation. All of this impacts on the public perception of the legal system.’
‘In New Zealand today, the reality is that very few standard civil proceedings are
heard within a year of filing. In the civil jurisdiction the effects of delay are well
documented. There is financial uncertainty, which in many cases can cause significant psychological trauma to individuals. It can have a significant impact on businesses, their future planning, contingencies and lost opportunity costs. As well the longer cases take to get to trial, the greater the quantum of costs.
This includes not just the direct legal costs, but also the inevitable costs to businesses and individuals that are usually overlooked.’
Sir John said that the majority of citizens could not afford to get access to justice
What did the Chief Justice say about affordable access to justice?
Access to justice problematic.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Helen Winkelmann, has recently spoken out about the difficulties that low and even middle income earners have in accessing the justice system.
Kevin Stent (Stuff):
The country’s top judge, Helen Winkelmann, has spoken out on access to justice.
A strong advocate of access to justice, she has said: ‘‘Access to justice is the critical underpinning of the rule of law in our society: it is the notion that all, the good, the bad, the weak, the powerful, exist under and are bound by the law. That condition cannot exist without access to courts, and without the ability to obtain a just resolution of claims before those courts. Cost, delay and a lack of representation all can act as barriers to justice.’’
Winkelmann has challenged the legal profession to come up with models that meet the needs of all parts of society, not just those who can afford it.
Why Are Lawyers Able to Get Away with Unacceptable Charges and Behaviour?
Legislation has been drafted by lawyers that allows them to self-regulate and get away with doing a lot of unacceptable things which others cannot do. Complaining about a lawyer is usually a waste of time.
It is normal for tradesmen and other professionals to apologize for poor service and offer to make good any mistakes or problems they have created for a client but lawyers have come to believe that they have the right to please themselves what they do. There is rarely anything clients can do or afford to do to get redress. The more unreliable and incompetent a lawyer is, the more money they make.
Lawyers should be made to provide detailed accounts showing hours worked and the rates charged. They should be required to make deductions for any costs or losses where they are at fault. All lawyers should have to make every effort to resolve complaints with clients and if this fails the complaint should go to an independent ombudsman who is not a lawyer. Legislation would need to be changed to eliminate the special exemptions and privileges which lawyers have written into legislation to benefit themselves.
Legislated self-regulation arranged by lawyers allows them to operate without any transparency, accountability and independent oversight. No-one else is able to do this.
There is no point making a complaint to the NZ Law Society because fellow lawyers who operate or endorse the same scams are those who deal with complaints about overcharging and unacceptable behaviour. Unlike other industries, there is no independent organisation that deals with complaints. If you do complain to a law firm about a charge or service or the legal process, they can say that you have lost trust in them and dump you. If you don’t want to lose the thousands of dollars you have invested in educating your lawyer about your situation, there is nothing to be gained by resisting or complaining to the New Zealand Law Society because they normally favour the lawyer. If you have to get a new lawyer, you will have to be very careful to not say anything they might not like.
There is nothing to be gained by trying to get any redress for losses arising from the actions of a bad lawyer. The New Zealand Law Society has no independent complaints process so the lawyers who deal with complaints know that they have done the same sort of thing themselves so they are not prepared to uphold a complaint except in extreme circumstances. The same would apply to a judge if anyone represented themselves and took a private prosecution against their lawyer.
Complaints made about the New Zealand Law Society and about judges are rarely upheld by the lawyers considering them. Several thousand complaints have been made about the bias and behaviour of judges but action has only been taken in a few cases.
Research done by Professor Lisa Marriott of Victoria University shows that Judges impose sentences for benefit fraud that are three times higher than the sentences for white collar criminal fraud involving far higher sums. The reason for this is that judges know that before their lawyer mates gave them a job as a judge, they had indulged in similar white collar fraudulent activities that had been legalised for lawyers.
Lawyers regard dishonesty as normal and acceptable. They make a lot of money from those who lack honesty, integrity, ethics and morals so they have arranged legal processes to encourage and reward these people. In playing along with this, they have taken on some of these same traits themselves.
Lawyers have little or no regard for ethics, morals, honesty and integrity. They have no concerns about accuracy, truth, justice and the victims they create. If any lawyers do have concerns about what goes on in the legal industry, they fail to do anything about it so are just as guilty as the rest.
The Chief Justice has hinted that lawyers should reconsider their fee structure. But given that lawyers are largely in a monopoly situation, and can charge exorbitant fees, it is unlikely that they will, willingly, lower their rates anytime soon.’
Do Lawyers Scam the Government So That You End Up Paying More in Tax or
Having Reduced Public Services?
After the Government had an Inquiry into Legal Aid, there were news media articles with headlines like “ Crooked car boot lawyers ‘. These articles explained how some legal aid lawyers operated from their car boots and made up to $500,000 per year. Most lawyers refuse to provide legal aid services because they say that payments are too low.
In late March 2020 the Government announced that businesses which suffered a 30% drop in revenue due to covid-19 could apply for a 12 week wage subsidy amounting to just over $7,000 per employee. law firms were able to work from home for 5 weeks and were then back in the office after that. They were able to make a lot of extra money by advising clients on employment contracts , leases etc and by creating disputes between business owners and their employees, landlords and suppliers etc. Some law firms also obtained the 8 week Extension wage subsidy which required a 40% drop in revenue. They received 20 weeks of wage subsidies during a time when they had increased business.
Law firms each received up to $2,300,000 but over half did not repay the money they wrongly retained. This is another indicator of how dishonest lawyers are.
Lawyers who prepare Government legislation, often write into it work for lawyers that can be charged at high rates.
About 1 in 6 Members of Parliament have a law degree but have failed to get a job in a law firm. They know that their time as an M P is limited so they want to open up money making opportunities for lawyers for when they leave Parliament. They also want to be able to use their contacts in Parliament to get special favours for clients by selling access to Ministers who are easily influenced.
Lawyers use trusts and other measures to help themselves, family members and clients to avoid paying tax and to claim Government assistance that they and their children would not otherwise be entitled to. The full extent of this is unknown but it could result in fellow taxpayers having to pay billions of dollars each year in extra tax.
How Have Lawyers Blocked Affordable Access to Justice Reforms?
The outdated traditional, inefficient, unduly complicated, time consuming and very expensive methods used by lawyers in the dispute business should be replaced with straightforward modern decision-making processes?
Each party to a dispute could put forward a written statement of the basic facts and AI could be used to make an immediate independent unbiased decision. Penalties could be imposed for any false or misleading statements made by either party. This process would be vastly more honest, quicker and cheaper than what currently goes on.
Where disputes arise involving less than $60,000, lawyers cannot make much money on them so they have allowed them to go to the Disputes Tribunal. The parties involved put forward the case that they have prepared and the Referee makes a decision based on the facts. This is a much quicker, cheaper and better way of resolving disputes and it should be available to anyone, regardless of the amount involved.
In 2007 an endowment established the Legal Issues Centre at Otago University. It aimed to carry out research on how to have a more affordable and accessible legal system but staff were oppose to this so it did very little research.
The Minister of Justice, Attorney General and Chief Justice were well aware of the problems with access to justice so in 2018 they employed someone to carry out research on overseas experience and make recommendations. A proposal was put forward for Court cases up to $500,000 to follow a far better and similar process to that used in European countries. A committee of lawyers was asked to consider these reforms but the Law Society, Bar Association and lawyers blocked any changes being made.
The legal establishment is never going to agree to significant changes to the highly profitable fee driven litigation industry so they need to be bypassed and a quicker, cheaper and better inquisitorial justice system made available to all citizens.
Further readings by Dr Bruce Curtis
This bibliography brings together a series of opinion pieces examining the accessibility, affordability and operation of New Zealand’s civil justice system. Collectively, the articles argue that the principal barriers to justice are not simply shortages of judicial resources, but the cost structures, professional incentives and regulatory arrangements that shape legal services. They also explore related issues including the Disputes Tribunal, legal education, the treatment of young lawyers, and the implications of artificial intelligence for the future of legal practice and access to justice.
Each entry below includes bibliographic details and a brief description of the item.
Bruce Curtis: Courts open in theory but are closed in practice. Otago Daily Times, 24 November 2025.
Summary: Curtis argues that the principal barrier to access to justice in New Zealand is the high cost of legal services rather than a shortage of judges or court funding. He contends that lawyers operate within a self-regulating system that permits broad discretion in fee-setting, making legal representation unaffordable for many individuals and small businesses. Curtis maintains that the billable-hour model rewards delay rather than efficient resolution, increasing costs and discouraging people from pursuing legitimate claims. He further argues that the legal profession’s control over regulation and complaints processes limits accountability and shields lawyers from meaningful competition. Curtis concludes by advocating fixed fees, transparent pricing, independent oversight of legal costs, and greater use of non-lawyer advocates and online services to improve access to justice.
Bruce Curtis: NZ’s justice system is shaped to increase the billable hours of lawyers. Hawkes Bay Today, 25 November 2025.
Summary: Curtis argues that the Disputes Tribunal is one of the most effective parts of New Zealand’s justice system because it resolves disputes quickly, cheaply and without lawyers. He contends that the tribunal’s monetary cap is arbitrary and forces many litigants into expensive court processes where legal costs often exceed the value of the dispute. Curtis maintains that the adversarial court system rewards delay, procedure and billable hours, while simpler judge-led or inquisitorial models could deliver faster and fairer outcomes. He argues that efforts to reform civil justice have been quietly resisted by legal professional bodies because greater efficiency would reduce lawyers’ income. Curtis concludes that the Disputes Tribunal should be able to hear much larger disputes, or even disputes of any size where both parties agree, giving people access to a cheaper and more effective forum for resolving conflicts.
Bruce Curtis: Cap makes justice inaccessible. Otago Daily Times, 5 December 2025.
Summary: Curtis argues that the $30,000 cap on Disputes Tribunal claims is arbitrary and forces many people into expensive court processes that they cannot afford. He contends that the adversarial court system generates delay, paperwork and legal costs that primarily benefit lawyers rather than litigants seeking fair outcomes. Drawing on comments by retired High Court judge Sir John Hansen, Curtis maintains that civil courts are poorly designed to discover the truth and instead reward procedural complexity. He argues that attempts to introduce more efficient, inquisitorial civil-justice reforms were quietly resisted by legal professional bodies because such changes would reduce billable work. Curtis concludes that New Zealand should remove the tribunal cap and expand judge-led civil processes to make justice faster, cheaper and more accessible.
Bruce Curtis: How lawyers turn routine legal work into a luxury few can afford. New Zealand Herald, 11 December 2025.
Summary: Curtis argues that legal services in New Zealand have become unaffordable for many people, with routine legal work attracting fees far beyond the complexity of the tasks involved. He contends that lawyers use urgency fees, standard documents, and specialised legal knowledge to justify charges that bear little relationship to the actual work performed. Curtis maintains that reliance on inherited English common-law principles, private arbitration, and complex procedures leaves ordinary people dependent on expensive legal advice. He further argues that the legal profession restricts the supply of practising lawyers through training and credentialling bottlenecks, helping to keep fees high. Curtis concludes that the access-to-justice crisis begins with the structure and economics of the legal profession itself, leaving many New Zealanders unable to afford basic legal assistance or pursue their rights.
Bruce Curtis: The exploitation of young lawyers: a warning to vulnerable law students. Otago Daily Times, 30 January 2026.
Summary: Curtis argues that young lawyers are routinely exploited through a professional structure that relies on long hours, heavy workloads and relatively low effective pay while firms capture the profits from their labour. He contends that the legal profession disguises this arrangement as “mentoring”, even though many junior lawyers experience it as a process of labour extraction and attrition rather than genuine training. Curtis maintains that the system deliberately filters out large numbers of graduates, preserving the scarcity and earning power of senior lawyers while providing a steady supply of compliant junior staff. He further argues that the same dynamics are evident in legal aid, where junior lawyers carry substantial responsibilities under demanding conditions while firms seek to remain financially viable. Curtis concludes that the exploitation of young lawyers is inseparable from wider problems of access to justice, because the profession’s business model prioritises senior income and firm profitability over both junior practitioners and the public.
Bruce Curtis: AI is more efficient but can harm lawyer-client trust. Otago Daily Times, 6 February 2026.
Summary: Curtis argues that the legal profession is adopting AI in ways that increase efficiency and profitability for firms while shifting risks onto clients and junior lawyers. He contends that AI is replacing much of the routine work through which young lawyers traditionally developed professional judgement, creating the prospect of a less experienced and less capable profession in the future. Curtis maintains that clients often have little knowledge of how AI is used in their cases and may be exposed to errors, omissions, or flawed reasoning without adequate disclosure or safeguards. He further argues that AI deepens the information imbalance between lawyers and clients by making legal advice harder to scrutinise and responsibility for mistakes more difficult to assign. Curtis concludes that AI should be subject to stronger rules, transparency requirements, and accountability measures before its widespread use causes routine harm to clients and undermines trust in the legal system.
Bruce Curtis: Who Judges the Judges?, 9 March 2025
Summary: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who guards the guards themselves? Curtis argues that New Zealand’s system of judicial accountability appears comprehensive on paper but rarely produces meaningful consequences for judges. He contends that the Judicial Conduct Commissioner is structurally limited because complaints about judicial decisions must be pursued through expensive appeals, while serious conduct complaints are often reviewed within the judiciary itself, creating the perception that judges regulate judges. Drawing on comments by retired Justice Sir John Hansen, high-profile complaints involving senior judges, and research on disparities in the treatment of welfare fraud and tax evasion, Curtis maintains that public confidence is weakened when accountability mechanisms appear ineffective and outcomes seem unequal. He reviews a range of proposed reforms, including an independent complaints body, greater transparency, broader investigative powers, and a Royal Commission of Inquiry into aspects of the justice system. Curtis concludes that judicial independence is essential but must be balanced by meaningful accountability, because public trust depends on the belief that no institution is beyond scrutiny.
