Next week, as in the past six years, over 1,000 lawyers will gather in Eilat for five intensive, discussion-filled days, in the context of the Annual Meeting of the Israel Bar Association (ISBA). Attorney Eitan Erez will be attending the convention in order to participate in the panel that will discuss the liquidation and rehabilitation of companies. For four years, Erez, who is currently running for the leadership of the ISBA in the elections scheduled for June 26, served as the chair of the Annual Meeting committee, which organizes the convention. But about two years ago, after Erez announced that he had decided to run for ISBA president against Dr. Yoram Danziger, who at the time was the candidate of the faction of ISBA president Shlomo Cohen, Cohen suspended Erez from the convention chairmanship.

"I committed a serious crime when I announced that I was running for president of the Bar Association," Erez said this week. "Shlomo Cohen, who is a big democrat when it comes to others, called me and informed me that he was suspending me from the chairmanship of the convention because I could not be given a public platform if I ran for president of the Bar Association. In the same breath, this big democrat, who is concerned about human rights, appointed Yoram Danziger in my place. He was willing to give a platform to Danziger."

About a year ago Danziger withdrew his candidacy for president of the ISBA, after his partner, Dr. Avigdor Klagsbald, was indicted and convicted of causing death by negligence in a traffic accident. Attorney Yuri Guy-Ron is now running on behalf of Cohen's faction instead of Danziger.

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"Attorney Erez was not suspended," said an ISBA spokeswoman on behalf of Cohen, in response to Erez's complaints. "There is no permanent job in the association as chair of the Annual Meeting. The president of the association did in fact level criticism at attorney Erez, who abused his status as chair of the Annual Meeting and delivered a transparent and blatant campaign speech at the opening session of the convention in 2005."

But the complaints of Erez, one of the six candidates for the leadership of the ISBA in the elections, are not confined to anger at being suspended from the chairmanship of the prestigious convention. "Look how the president of the Bar Association used the Institute of Continuing Legal Studies [headed by Danziger, Y.Y.], how he used the Bar Association bulletin Orekh Din (Attorney), how he kept shoving in pictures of Danziger and later of Guy-Ron," he says. "Although," he adds sarcastically, "I must point out that this was relatively moderate in comparison to the use made of Mr. Ilan Bombach [chair of the Tel Aviv District committee, who is also running for president of the ISBA, Y.Y.] in the journal of the Tel Aviv Attorneys Association, Hapraklitim (The Attorneys), which costs us NIS 750,000 a year. There are between four and 10 pictures of him in every issue."

You are in effect claiming that the other candidates' behavior is lacking propriety and that they are wasting the resources of the Bar Association.

"Every candidate must pay for the campaign for leadership of the association from his own private pocket. I am funding this entire campaign, with a large sum of money, from my private pocket and from contributions from friends. Everything is written down and documented. I am not funding my campaign from the lawyers' membership dues, from the association's Web site, or from the association's organs, but from my own money. Others are using the entire infrastructure of the association, its logistics, its mail - and that is unacceptable."

During the eight years Cohen has served as head of the ISBA, its activity as a trade union for attorneys, which is supposed to act on behalf of their sectoral interests, was low in its order of priorities. Most activity focused on the field of human rights and the rule of law. Erez, in addition to other candidates, proposes that the question of the attorneys' livelihood should once again become a major concern of the ISBA. "I'm tired of seeing the continual decline in the status of lawyers," he says. "I could have continued to earn money for many years to come, but I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to continue to see thousands of lawyers unemployed. Every time they swear in 2,000 new lawyers at the Teddy Stadium [in Jerusalem] or at another stadium, I see the mocking smile at the corner of the mouths of [news anchors] Haim Yavin or Yonit Levy. A smile of 'Here are another 2,000 lawyers.' All the former prestige of the profession has disappeared."

When Erez, 52, was certified as an attorney 26 years ago, only 7,000 lawyers were registered with the Israel Bar Association. After the upcoming certification ceremony, it will have 38,000 members. "Do you now what an honor it once was to be a lawyer? Do you know how proud my parents were when I became a lawyer? Today a lawyer is worth less than a taxi driver. Lawyers work as house painters, plumbers and plasterers. A lawyer who works as a plumber takes on traffic cases once every 10 days, when he goes to represent people for NIS 300-NIS 400. That's what we've come to. The rates are too cheap, it's impossible to work for such fees, and lawyers who work for such fees cannot buy books, computers, equipment. They can't keep up-to-date, attend continuing education courses. That's why there are more claims of professional negligence afterward."

Have you decided that your agenda in the elections for leadership of the ISBA will deal with the need to raise legal fees?

"I'm telling you, the elections will be decided on the question of who will provide a livelihood for the 48,000 lawyers we will have here in 2010. Half the lawyers today are preoccupied with surviving. Full-time lawyers in Ashkelon earn NIS 4,000 a month, and in Nazareth they earn NIS 3,500. A barrister in London gets 350 pounds sterling an hour; in other words, he earns in an hour what an Israeli lawyer earns in a month."

You have also expressed opposition to the association's pro bono project, in which the needy receive legal advice free of charge.

"Pro bono is a good thing, I take pro bono cases myself, but I do it anonymously. I don't like this attitude that a person does a mitzvah and advertises the fact that he performs good deeds. The problem is that they invest NIS 1.25 million a year in the project, without any genuine examination of eligibility. The same thing happens in the Office of the Public Defender and the Justice Ministry's Legal Aid Bureau. These are three systems that offer free legal help to tens of thousands of people, without any genuine examination of eligibility."

It's a very important social service, what's wrong with that?

"In effect, 90 percent of the criminal field is controlled by the Public Defender's Office. In legal aid, for example, there's a criterion that even if you have an apartment, that doesn't disqualify you from receiving the legal aid. In other words, if you live in [upscale] Savion or Ramat Aviv Gimmel, you are still eligible to receive free legal aid. So let's simply give free legal aid to everyone and get rid of the entire profession. I haven't heard that the architects' association gives free building permits, or that accountants balance the books free of charge. The damage caused to the lawyers as a result of that is hundreds of millions of shekels annually. If a person can get a lawyer free of charge, or dirt cheap, why shouldn't he take him?"

What you are actually saying is that your agenda will benefit lawyers, although it will harm the general public.

"My agenda will lead to a situation where a person who has money will pay for legal assistance. What's more natural than that? I haven't heard that they're giving out furniture or cars free of charge. When I was at a living room discussion group in Nazareth they told me about a teacher who owns an apartment and earns NIS 6,500 a month, and she came to pro bono and received free legal advice. Can't she pay a lawyer $1,000? Of course she can."

You're lucky that the electorate for the institutions of the ISBA is composed of lawyers only. You're proposing to make it more difficult for the public to receive legal representation.

"There's no contradiction between the needs of lawyers and the desires of the general public. It's a mistake to think that lowering the fees of the lawyers is good for the general public. Since they canceled the obligatory minimum fee, there are no set fees for professional services. Everything is wide open. A case for which I'll ask for $15,000, and the second person $10,000, and the third $9,000, in the end they'll find someone who will do it for $2,000. The result is that the lawyers are working for intolerable fees. Such lawyers are forced to be negligent."

Aside from curtailing the legal aid mechanisms in the civil and criminal spheres, Erez proposes the adoption of a policy that will limit the number of lawyers in Israel. "Today nobody talks about how many lawyers there are in Israel," he says. "It's clear that this number has to be brought down. It untenable that today in Israel there's a lawyer for every 200 residents. There's no need for more than 15,000 lawyers in Israel. In Japan there are 25,000 lawyers for a population of over 100 million. We have to consider changing law studies to master's degree programs only. Today law is the easiest profession to study because the level of studies has declined, not only in the colleges but even in the universities. The situation today is that one can study law for one and a half days a week, by correspondence."