The letter Disband the Bar refers. Paul Warren is a man bristling with rage and outrage. People in such a state are wont to say careless and often damaging things, and ignore the complexity of many relevant and pertinent issues.

This much is clear from the recent abuse of the Indonesian maid, Nirmala. We have our very own ministers sounding no better than an uneducated frothing member of a lynch mob in full swing. These people also often tend to make absolutist claims it is all or nothing, with nothing in between. In that respect, Warren is no different with his call to disband the Bar.

In all honesty, I am not quite sure just what Warren is angry about. Is it because the Bar Council president said nothing new? Even this complaint is old. Is it then because of his vicarious 'disgust with the goings-on amongst their peers'? If so, Mr Warren is very vague about these purported 'goings-on'.

I am a lawyer and I must confess that I am not quite sure what Warren is referring to. There are a great many things unsatisfactory about the legal practice, but that goes with any job. He claims there is a "greater hypocrisy amongst this branch of society and its leaders in their attempt to cloud the real issues that matter." What society is he referring to, what leaders and what are these issues that matter?

I could go on about Warren's statements but the point I am driving home is that these are all vague, ambiguous and outright malicious statements with not a shred of detail to substantiate them.

I can discern two visible point of provocation. The first is that if we lawyers were 'real professionals' we would leave our profession because it's so 'stench-filled'. To Warren, 'real professionals' walk away when they find that it would cost them their 'conscience, self-esteem and self worth'.

The second is that the Bar being all powerful has somehow managed to appoint 'court jesters' instead of judges. I shall deal with each of these in turn.

Firstly, Warren does not seem to understand what it means to be a 'real professional'. Professionals do their job in accordance with their ethics, duty and instructions to the best of their abilities.

A professional does not bother about irrelevant matters like what people think of him when he is doing his job, or whether he would be promoted or not, or whether this person would like him if he did it.

A professional lawyer is one who does his job to the best of his abilities in accordance with his ethics, the instructions of clients and above all, his duty to justice. A professional lawyer will do his work in spite of the insurmountable hurdles he faces. So the first thing about being a professional is that they do not bail out.

Secondly, I agree that the entire legal profession is in the pits at the moment, although I disagree with Warren's sense of smell or understanding. Just because the legal profession is dismal, does not necessarily mean that it demeans lawyers' 'conscience, self esteem and self worth.'

It is how you practise. If one practises emphatically; ethically; with justice in one's heart; does legal aid work; contributing to legal awareness programmes, how does that demean a lawyer or lower the attributes Warren mentions?

Lawyers that feel demeaned are the ones that do not practise ethically, or are forced not to. It is not uncommon that lawyers are so disgusted with their work when clients do not listen to their advice or get very angry when a lawyer tells them they cannot do something.

With all clients, there is always that implicit threat that if you do not tell them what they want to hear or do as they do, they would take all their work elsewhere to a firm that would. So some firms just grin and bear it.

What many do not understand is that not only must lawyers be mature, clients must be too. The mature clients will accept the limitations of their position or case and work within that. Unfortunately, not many people or companies are used to paying somebody to tell them they cannot do something.

If all lawyers were ethical and had the courage to turn away a client and risk business, we would have fewer problems. But there will always be such lawyers just as there will be dodgy doctors and accounting firms.

It takes a strong person to turn his nose up at the irresistible scent of money. So the second thing about being a professional is that professionalism is about how you do your work and what you do.

Thirdly, if all the lawyers left the profession or put down their pens for a day, what then? What results is Warren referring to, because I cannot see any. Who would do the sale and purchase transactions? Who would file claims for road accident victims? Who would defend you in court? Who would stand by you and fight for your rights when the executive has beaten you up, bled you dry and wasted every cent of your hard earned money?

Warren says, 'honest and good men will just walk out of it'. Who then will do the good and honest work in the judiciary and legal practise? And where would these honest and good men go and what would they do? If a flower can grow out of dung, why can't honest and good lawyers and judges continue their practise in conditions that may be just as foul?

Now, in respect of the second issue, as I have said elsewhere with my friends, the Bar Council right now, for the most part, is stale and has no need for more apologists. There is no courage, dynamism, innovation and freshness to it.

And if the Bar Council is anything, it is certainly not powerful. In fact, it has been sidelined so much by the government that it makes no meaningful impact on any law-related issue, legislation or policy in our country.

I am therefore unsure how Warren came to the conclusion that the Bar Council has a direct impact on the judiciary especially when many of the judges come not from the Bar but from the judicial and legal service (i.e. the government). Warren has failed to show what tangible benefits the entire nation can hope to receive by disbanding the Bar.

So what Warren says sounds all very good if one doesn't stop to think about what he says. This is because it satisfies that consuming rage; it satisfies that need to lash out at somebody, anybody and make them hurt.

But when you think about it, he is not saying anything new either and his solutions to the problem are too simplistic. What he says is no better than those empty platitudes that we hear day in day out from those people all of us have elected to serve us; he just says it negatively and angrily.

After reading Warren's piece over and over and thinking it over, I am left with this question: And then?