Expired licences bar 88% State lawyers
Delayed renewal of practising licences is preventing about 44 lawyers in the Attorney General (AG) Chambers and Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from practising law, thereby delaying people’s access to justice.
The lawyers’ practising licences expired on January 31 this year and Ministry of Justice is yet to process the renewals.
The development has affected proceedings of some cases as currently there are only six State prosecutors, including AG Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda and DPP Masauko Chamkakala who are eligible to handle cases in the country’s courts out of about 50 State lawyers. About 27 are from the DPP’s office while 23 are from AG Chambers.
In an interview yesterday, Ministry of Justice spokesperson Frank Namangale confirmed the expiry of practising licences for about 88 percent of the State lawyers, but could not give more details, saying it is an internal matter.
“It’s an issue to do with arrears, but we cannot divulge more because we consider that as an internal matter and it is been sorted out,” he said.
Section 30 of the Legal Education and Legal Practitioners Act gives Malawi Law Society (MLS) powers to produce an annual practising licence to all the legal practitioners upon payment of licence fee.
In Section 30 (4), the Act states that a legal practitioner shall not be entitled to practise unless he has a valid licence to practise.
Read Section 30 (5) of the Act in part: “The registrar shall not issue a licence to practise to a legal practitioner, unless the legal practitioner has (a) paid the annual subscription to the society; (b) performed the full hours prescribed for the annual mandatory pro-bono work as determined by the society, from time to time.”
MLS data shows that every lawyer’s practising licence expires on January 31 of the following year after the date of its issue. For the 2023/24 practice year, licence practice fee was at K375 000 and MLS had 747 licensed legal practitioners in the 2023/2024 practice year.
