APPROVALS of advertisement of a lawyer’s services in Fiji will need to come from the chief registrar’s office.
This was highlighted by lawyer Diven Prasad during the Fiji Law Society Annual Convention at the Pearl Resort in Pacific Harbour yesterday.
Mr Prasad highlighted that years ago, lawyers in Fiji were barred from advertising their services or their profession under the rules formulated but the introduction of the new Act in 2009 somehow allowed lawyers to market their service.
“If we need to advertise then we will need to draw up the advertisement and send it to the chief registrar’s office for his approval and whether he likes the advertisement or not that is a different story but that is the mechanism that we currently have in place.
“I think order to better market ourselves or better advertisement, we should write to the chief registrar’s office perhaps as Fiji Law Society collectively so we can market our law firms and also state which area we specialise in,” Mr Prasad said.
He stated that it is important to note that in any profession including law is a business and without letting people know of the service that the law firms offer, then progress would be limited.
The Legal Practitioners Decree 2009 states that ” practitioner shall not advertise on television or radio without the consent of the Registrar, which consent may be of specific or general application. Nothing in this rule shall prevent a practitioner from appearing on radio or television to answer questions of a legal nature or provide public information on legal issues, in circumstances where no payment or inducement has been provided by the practitioner to obtain this publicity.”
