New Bar Association president Trevor Moniz says sloppy record keeping could be adding hundreds of dollars to lawyers bills and leading to inconsistent judgments.

He said the Bar Association would be campaigning for recording of new laws and judgments to be modernised by Government.

Mr. Moniz said there was no proper system for publishing judgments on cases.

"Photocopies are put in a loose leaf binder in the Supreme Court library,'' he said.

"There's no proper system to allow the reporting of new judgments.'' And he said as there was no subject list, but merely an alphabetical list, lawyers would struggle to find new judgments in an area of law they were researching.

"It's a service Government should be providing.'' He said the Bar Association knew of a local firm bidding to put new judgments on the web while an overseas company was offering a service to put judgments in bound copies as well as on the Internet.

And he stressed that the problem wasn't something that only lawyers should fret about.

"People always think things won't affect them. It's a bit like saying why have doctors, I am not sick. But when you get sick you want more doctors.

"It leads to inconsistent results in courts if nobody knows what the results are.'' "There should be consistent application of the law or people will be deciding cases wrongly.

"People will think it's palm tree justice when they are not able to find out what the law is. You can't claim to offer first world justice and offer a third world system.'' "People are using a creaking justice system and they are getting used to it.

They don't have higher expectations.'' Lawyer hits out at `sloppy record keeping' in courts He said: "You might get a copy of the new law or amended statutes and somebody has to put them in the appropriate place.

"Government offered new statute books for a fee but after a couple of years they said they wouldn't do it any more and said that CDs would be much better.'' But Mr. Moniz said Government had stopped issuing CDs now and lawyers had to photocopy new laws and then cut and paste them into a folder.

He said: "You shouldn't have to do that in a jurisdiction that claims to be as advanced as Bermuda.'' He said hunting for correct statutes added to time lawyers spent on cases which affected final bills.

"Rather than taking one hour it might take ten hours which adds to the costs of the clients' bill.'' Asked about Mr. Moniz's concerns Attorney General Dame Lois Browne Evans said: "I am just hearing about this now. I know what my Government is concerned about.

"I have been concerned about any kind of recording, about the recording of Hansard for the last 30 years or more similarly in the courts.

"If he has a priority it requires that he write to us.'' Mr. Moniz said he welcomed the planned new system of recording court cases, which he said he had heard would be in place by July.

Lawyers have been wanting the system to give them an accurate record of what was said during trials.