General Legal Council suspends Lawyer Xavier Sosu
A human rights lawyer, Mr Francis Xavier Sosu, has been suspended from practising as a lawyer for three years by the General Legal Council (GLC).
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The suspension took effect from June 2, 2017 and will end on June 1, 2020.
The GLC suspended the legal practitioner after it found him guilty of overcharging a client and also violating the legal profession’s code of conduct rule which enjoins lawyers not to advertise their services.
But the human rights lawyer and activist is reported to have vowed to appeal the decision of the GLC.
The first part of Mr Sosu’s suspension was in relation to a legal service he rendered to a man known as Francis Agyare, who spent 14 years in jail without trial.
Mr Sosu represented Mr Agyare in a compensation claim in which the Human Rights Court, in 2014, awarded Mr Agyare GH¢200,000 as compensation for his unlawful incarceration.
Mr Agyare claimed Mr Sosu promised to represent him on pro bono basis, but ended up charging him GH¢50,000 after the compensation was paid.
He subsequently filed a complaint at the GLC, accusing Mr Sosu of excessively charging him.
Guilty
In its notice announcing the suspension, the GLC said Lawyer Sosu was convicted after he had pleaded guilty to charging Mr Agyare GH¢50,000 “which was excessive and an overestimation of the services rendered him when he represented to him that he was offering pro bono legal service’’.
The said act by Mr Sosu, the GLC said, was in violation of Rule 9(9) of the legal profession (Professional Conduct and Etiquette) Rules, 1969, L.I. 613.
Again, the GLC said the legal practitioner failed to appear before its disciplinary committee during its sitting on June 9, 2016, an offence, it said, he pleaded guilty to.
Advertising
The other aspect of Mr Sosu’s suspension, according to the GLC, was that he made comments on certain cases in public, with the sole purpose of advertising himself and his law firm.
The council gave two examples: the first was a case in which he represented Torgbui Afede XIV against the Chief of the Defence Staff, while the second was a case in which he represented a man known as Patrick Reynolds Yeboah against a company known as M.Dex Company Limited.
In the first case, the GLC said, Mr Sosu “took to Facebook with pictures of the parties and made comments on the case to the public with the firm’s name, address and telephone numbers attached, with the primary motive of personal advertising and touting’’.
With regard to the second case, the GLC said, Mr Sosu “took to Facebook, posting the writ of summons in the said case and made comments to the public with his firm’s name, address and telephone numbers attached, with the primary motive of personal advertisement and touting’’.
According to the council, the two acts by the legal practitioner were in violation of “Rule 2(4) of the Legal Profession (Professional Conduct and Etiquette) Rules, 1969 L.I. 613’’.
It further explained that Mr Sosu pleaded guilty and was convicted for three years of the two violations.
The two sentences, it said, would run concurrently.
Mentorship
During the period of suspension, the GLC asked Mr Sosu not to hold himself as a legal practitioner “or attend chambers or render or purport to render any professional legal service to any person’’.
Also, it instructed that a senior legal practitioner must mentor Mr Sosu for a year and the mentor must “lodge periodic reports with the General Legal Council’s Disciplinary Committee’’.
