The Cult of the Untouchable: When Sri Lanka’s Lawyers Demand Rights but Dodge Responsibility
Legal Correspondent
Sri Lanka’s legal profession likes to present itself as the final firewall between the citizen and tyranny, the last line of defence against authoritarian excess, political interference, and institutional decay. Every few years, lawyers march, strike, or issue grand declarations about judicial independence, democracy, and human rights. This week is no different.
A newly formed grouping calling itself Free Lawyers, claiming a membership of around 1,200, has announced a demonstration on 24 January, ahead of a possible lawyers’ strike. Their stated mission sounds noble enough: defending judicial independence, protecting citizens from political and administrative oppression, and safeguarding professional dignity.
But beneath the rhetoric lies an uncomfortable truth that the legal fraternity has long refused to confront: Sri Lankan lawyers have become experts at demanding accountability from everyone except themselves.
Before the Strike, Show the Receipts
Let us begin with a simple question—one that affects every ordinary Sri Lankan who has ever walked into a lawyer’s chamber clutching a file and a bundle of cash.
Do Sri Lankan lawyers routinely issue receipts to their clients?
The honest answer is no.
Cash payments without receipts remain the norm, not the exception. Fees are negotiated privately, recorded selectively, and declared inconsistently. Bank transfers—now compulsory or strongly encouraged in most regulated professions—are still treated by many lawyers as optional inconveniences. Income disclosure remains opaque. Tax compliance is, at best, uneven.
Before marching on the streets demanding the rule of law, lawyers must first demonstrate that they themselves obey it.
A profession that regularly questions the integrity of politicians, bureaucrats, and judges cannot simultaneously operate an informal economy within its own chambers.
Equality Before the Law—Except for Lawyers?
One of the most corrosive attitudes that has taken root within Sri Lanka’s legal elite is the belief that lawyers are not ordinary citizens. There is an unspoken assumption—sometimes not even subtle—that lawyers deserve special treatment from police officers, state officials, courts, and society at large.
Traffic offences are waved away. Procedural rules are bent. Social status is weaponised. The law, ironically, becomes flexible when it applies to those who practise it.
This culture of entitlement has less to do with professional dignity and more to do with inherited privilege. Too many lawyers behave as though they were born with a silver spoon—entitled to deference, immunity, and moral authority merely by virtue of wearing a black coat.
In a democratic society, no profession enjoys moral superiority. Lawyers are not clergy. They are not royalty. They are service providers entrusted with public responsibility—and that trust must be earned daily through ethical conduct, not demanded through strikes.
Selective Outrage and Convenient Activism
The Free Lawyers organisation claims to stand up for flood victims, landslide survivors, and citizens oppressed by political or administrative actions. That work, where genuinely undertaken, deserves recognition.
But where was this collective outrage when lawyers themselves became facilitators of injustice?
Where was the mass mobilisation when politically connected clients abused court processes to delay cases for decades? Where were the protests when legal technicalities were weaponised to protect corruption? Where was the ethical uprising against lawyers who openly act as political fixers, brokers, and intermediaries rather than officers of the court?
The legal profession has been conspicuously silent about its own bad actors. No serious internal cleansing. No transparent disciplinary culture. No sustained push to reform billing practices, client accountability, or ethical enforcement.
Instead, activism appears episodic—loud when power shifts, quiet when proximity to power benefits the profession.
Judicial Independence Is Not a Shield for Professional Misconduct
There is no doubt that judicial independence must be protected. Judges must be free from political pressure, intimidation, or retaliation. That principle is non-negotiable in any democracy.
But judicial independence does not mean professional immunity.
Raising concerns about political interference does not entitle lawyers to operate above tax law, professional ethics, or financial transparency. Nor does it absolve them from behaving like ordinary citizens subject to the same rules they invoke so passionately in court.
If lawyers wish to claim the moral high ground, they must first clean the ground beneath their own feet.
A Profession at a Crossroads
Sri Lanka’s legal profession stands at a crossroads. It can continue down the familiar path of theatrical resistance—marches, strikes, press statements, and self-righteous indignation—or it can undertake genuine reform.
That reform must begin with basics:
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Mandatory issuance of receipts
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Preferential use of bank transfers over cash
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Transparent income declaration and tax compliance
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Stronger enforcement of professional ethics
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Equal treatment under the law, without privilege or entitlement
Until then, public sympathy will continue to erode.
The citizen struggling to pay legal fees, the worker facing court delays, and the taxpayer watching selective accountability unfold are no longer impressed by black coats and lofty slogans.
In a country desperate for institutional credibility, lawyers cannot demand trust while practising opacity. Judicial independence is essential—but so is professional integrity.
And integrity, unlike rhetoric, cannot be marched into existence.