Financial consultancy service under advocate profession
Karthikeyan R
(Querist) 02 February 2021
This query is : Resolved
Sir
One of my friend he is an advocate, doing legal practice since 2010, he is also doing financial service to customer by arranging bank loan for his business development etc., For his service, he did loan arrangement for one of his client, during 2015. As against which he got a cheque for his service charge for arranging bank loan but it dishonored and he filed NI 138. During trial, accused counsel pointed and demand that he can't file suit against accused and his above service is against of bar act etc.,hence case to be dismissed....
In this case, he need to be submitted written arguments with any citation for justifying his financial service is also come under the advocate service etc.,
I need your help in this regard pl, kindly reply at the earliest pl
regards
P. Venu
(Expert) 03 February 2021
Even if the alleged conduct is against professional ethics, that is no ground for dismissal of the complaint.
Rajendra K Goyal
(Expert) 03 February 2021
Consultancy is no employment on payroll but professional advice / service. A taxation lawyer extends consultancy in taxation matters.
Citation need to be searched at own level.
K Rajasekharan
(Expert) 04 February 2021
Let me make some points clear in this issue.
What the advocate is expected to do as part of his professional service is not to arrange loan and providing consultancy service consequent to it, but to provide legal services to borrowers for facilitating taking of loan without legal infirmities. The set of words you employ in denoting something is very crucial in legal issues.
In this case what is being agitated in the court is whether there is any liability or the cheque is dishonoured etc and that would alone come under the cheque case. So the advocate need not go into the other aspects of the issue. The court is not authorised to take up whether the service is legal of otherwise or look into it.
When the accused argues the illegality or inappropriateness of the service provided by the advocate it is a clear indirect admission of his utilisation of the service of the advocate considering it to be an illegal one that needs no payment and now raising that issue as a defence. If he would not have used the service it would have been his defence.
Even if he had used the legally permissible service of loan facilitation provided by an improper person (advocate) to him (that issue cannot be decided by this court) he is expected to pay the amount for the facilitation service provided by the improper person. The accused is guilty in allowing his cheque to be dishonoured.
Preponderance of probability is the standard being used in cheque case though it comes under criminal category.
I am afraid whether I could make my point clear in this response.
Karthikeyan R
(Querist) 05 February 2021
tk you Mr.Rajasekar and Mr.Rajendra Goyal for your kind and supportive reply for my defence in drafting written arguments, please.
