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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 9. 1st May 1974

[Introduction]

This article is by Yuri Grbich LIM, PhD, formerly of this university and now a lecturer at Monash University, Australia. The article, originally published in Australia, is reprinted unchanged except for a few specific references to Australia which have been removed.

Drawing of an man in robes and with a white wig

We are in the midst of an explosion of change, but our social institutions are failing to keep pace. It is high time lawyers began some soul-searching to see to what extent they are to blame.

Lawyers continue to be an inward-looking, self-perpetuating but very influential elite unable to break out of their own narrowly limited field of vision. The consequences are more damaging to society than is commonly appreciated.

Lawyers continue to dissipate their efforts on trivia. First, they spend far too much time on irrelevant and seemingly unrelated details. Second, they have not the perspective to see the extent to which the institutions they perpetuate are biased in favour of the affluent and the powerful.

They continue to spend most of their time serving the affluent or the pressure groups who are able to pay, and give scant regard to the wider interests of the rest of the community, and despite some charitable gestures, have little time left for those who most need their services.

Third, even when they are dealing with these problems their skills and intellectual base are not wide enough. The insights provided by social cost-benefit analysis and the wider perspective of other social sciences, not to mention the efficiency of computers and office systems, have largely passed lawyers by.