Justice Minister Simon Power will go to a cabinet meeting on Monday with a plan to fix serious and deep-seated problems in the legal aid system.
A shock review report issued yesterday revealed it was in crisis.
Administrative costs were out of control, it was open to abuse and it was being undermined by incompetent, unscrupulous lawyers looking after their own interests, the report said.
Dame Margaret Bazley, the former top public servant who headed the review team, said some lawyers and defendants were "abusing the system to the detriment of clients, the legal aid system, the courts and the taxpayer".
Mr Power said things had to change - and fast.
"When someone as experienced in providing services to the public as Dame Margaret talks about system-wide failings, a system open to abuse, and appalling behaviour, we know we have a problem,” he said.
The report was "very concerning" and the Government would quickly implement its recommendations.
A key recommendation was that the Legal Services Agency, which administers legal aid, should lose its independent status and be folded into the Ministry of Justice.
Another was that there should be a system for quickly expelling lawyers who were incompetent or dishonest.
Others included allowing only accredited lawyers to provide legal aid services, improving monitoring to detect fraud and over-claiming, and a specialist panel to review suspect lawyers' conduct.
Legal aid helps those who can't pay for their court defence so they are not deprived of a fair hearing, and the review found poor practices included:
- Lawyers making sentencing submissions without having read the pre-sentence report;
- Lawyers ignorant of legal principles and not realising their own ignorance;
- Lawyers failing to turn up at court;
- "Car boot” lawyers using District Court law library phones as their office numbers, and using interviewing rooms as their offices;
- Lawyers playing with the system by delaying a plea or changing pleas part-way through to maximise payments;
- Lawyers who demanded top-up payments from clients who did not understand legal aid; and
- Widespread abuse of the preferred lawyer policy by duty solicitors, including taking backhanders for recommending particular lawyers to applicants.
NZPA