Judge rules on validity of law society rules

Malawi’s Law Society (MLS) and its disciplinary committee have been given a wake-up call: the High Court has found that a rushed set of rules, made by the society to extend the time frame for handling disciplinary matters against its members, was not lawful. As Carmel Rickard explains in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, this meant disciplinary action against a member of the MLS, Chikumbutso Mkwamba, conducted in terms of these new rules, was also invalid. The society had been investigating a serious complaint brought against Mkwamba by a client, and had found him guilty of embezzlement and of bringing the profession into disrepute.