Is it just me?

I am affronted when reading of the obscene profits made by the banks and the more modest, but no less obscene, profits made by the retirement village industry that each of these institutions insist on the legal profession undertaking the role of their de facto unpaid printing provider. In some cases, this amounts to over one hundred pages that are required to be printed.

"Charge your clients” they say, but there is already push back to our profession over costs so often we, at our own cost, just absorb the cost of it. The irony is that some banks require not only a scanned copy of the documents but also the hard copy. One wonders where the building is that stores all those pages – or perhaps that hard copy, too, is scanned. What waste of time and paper – and we worry about plastic bags!

Further, why do we get asked to tell their clients what their rules and charges are (disclosure) when they have the client’s personal contact information on their file already and could (should?) complete that task themselves.

However, and being a realist, no doubt the Latin maxim, Adversus tonitruum magnitudinis peditum Libonis, will apply.

Grant Aislabie
Director, CG Law Ltd, Mt Maunganui.