Legal aid does not get a great deal of public sympathy.
That's probably because it's seen as being free legal help for criminals who are better convicted quickly and sent to jail.
Now, that (over simplified) attitude may not be praiseworthy but it is understandable.
And most efforts to get public support for legal aid do not take that attitude into account.
But there are good reasons to support proper legal aid that recognises the concern.
First, of course, much legal aid is not for criminal law; there is family law, workers compensation, pension benefits and other areas where sympathetic people need legal help.
But more, on the criminal side, if legal aid isn't provided then many accused will be self represented.
And that's a very bad thing because self represented accused take cases to trial and take cases through trial slooooowly.
Criminal cases can be slow with a lawyer but have a self represented accused and a 3 hour trial takes 2 days. Which means other trials won't happen and eventually guilty accused are released since their cases take too long to come to trial. It's a bit like the mass jail releases in the US -- so many people are sent to jail that the system overloads and everyone is set free regardless of the danger they present to society.
In this way legal aid is seen as a health measure for society -- it's not just a free gift to poor accused.
Of course, there is another (and better) reason for legal aid.
Justice is not justice if it is only for the rich. Yes, it is true the rich get more representation but that is a reality and not an ideal.
Tradition says that after the Flood God instructed all people in the certain basic principles -- one was to establish fair courts of justice where all would be treated equally before the law. To meet that obligation legal assistance ought to be given to those who need it but cannot pay for it. This is the true basis for legal aid.
3 comments:
The problem with justice as it exists today is that the quality of legal representation has a bearing on the outcome of the case, and it shouldn't.
I'm sure many people have stories; I have my own, which involves watching two cases that were basically identical, where one ended with a man paying a lawyer and getting off scot free, and the other, the very next case, heard by the same judge, results in a conviction.
And a good measure of the scepticism regarding legal aid is based around the recognition that the purpose of legal aid isn't to redress this imbalance at all, but just to hustle poor people through the system and into jail as quickly as possible.
So long as there exists one system of justice for rich people and another for poor people, scepticism regarding legal aid will persist, not as money wasted on guilty parties, but rather, money wasted to offer a sham and illusion of justice through the proffering of indifferent legal assistance.
Thats a good point -- and a sad one -- but true. Most lawyers still doing legal aid are either young and learning or ideologically committed to poverty law. So the representation is often very uneven.
Downes is right. In Canada, as in most countries, you get all the law you can afford. In the legal profession the cream rises to the top and becomes increasingly expensive on its way up. However the very best lawyers have the experience and talent to get the best results in most cases - if you can afford them. And yes, most keep up appearances with a bit of legal aid or pro bono work here and there, but in the overwhelming majority of cases you get precisely what you can afford to pay for.
That said there are cases where a superior lawyer with a higher billing rate can actually cost the client less in situations where he/she doesn't need to expend massive amounts of time on research and preparation that a less experienced lawyer will incur and bill for.
Post a Comment