The Gazette 1980

JULY-AUGUST

1

GAZETTE

described as a test case' (para. 3.2.4, p. 14). It is true that the document goes on to say that an applicant will not be refused by reason only of the fact that the proceedings if successful would benefit other persons, but that in such a case the Legal Aid Board would assess the applicant to an additional contribution reflecting the reasonable participation of such other person. I am bound to say that if such restrictive conditions had been laid down to guide law centres in. the United States, Canada, Australia or England the law centre movement would not have made the great impact it has as a new model for the provision of legal services.My fear is that the Irish Government's scheme will achieve the worst of both worlds. The elimination of the private practitioner from the system will deprive the citizen of easy access to local lawyers capable of handling ordinary civil disputes. On the other hand, the insistence that the law centres engage only in case-work for individual clients will emasculate the law centre movement. English Royal Commission Admittedly the Royal Commission on Legal Services in England did take a distinctly frosty tone about the broader kind of law centre activity. Law centres it said should confine their activities to providing legal advice and assistance and representation in regard to legal problems. Some law centres went beyond this to work for the community at large or sections of it. They often sought 'to attack the roots of problems by organising groups to bear on landlords, local authorities and central government either to improve working, housing or living conditions or to urge changes in priorities of public expenditure' (Vol. 1, p. 83, para. 8.19). Such work the Royal Commission said was not appropriate for a salaried legal service. But this part of the Royal Commission's Report seems to me to be based on a fundamental misreading of the nature of law centre work. Of course a line has to be drawn somewhere as to what work is properly within the scope of a state salaried lawyer. But if the line is drawn as narrowly as the Royal Commission suggest much of the point of having law centres in lost. The law centres in their evidence to the Royal Commission said that they were increasinly convinced that work for groups was more important than work for individuals and that this was where they saw their main contribution to lie. Unfortunately they did not give the Royal Commission enough insight into what kinds of activities they had in mind. It was only after the Report was published that they produced in their response to it a long list of examples of law centre work that ought, they argued, to be permitted. One law centre for instance had acted for numbers of parents concerned about the effects on children of lead in petrol. This led to discussions with the local authority which eventually agreed to try to ban the sale of petrol containing lead throughout the borough. Another law centre helped to push for better conditions in a large doss house with over a thousand beds and advised on the residents' rights to medical care, welfare benefits, and decent housing. A law centre negotiated with the local authority better conditions in regard to rapair and security of tenure for all the tens of thousands of council tenants in the borough. Another got engineers and surveyors to report on the conditions of highways and pavements which had fallen into bad repair causing an unusual number of accidents and as a result persuaded

practitioners is that they already have the skills to deal with a considerable part of the work that the poor would want to bring to lawyers. This applies especially in the field of matrimonial matters which in most countries is the largest single item of work in the civil field. Whether this would be true in a country such as Ireland with its special attitude to divorce remains to be seen but there can be little doubt that many of the legal problems of the poor are the same as those of the middle classes. Legal difficulties connected with the ownership of property, by definition, do not greatly affect those who have none but when property related issues and matters are excluded research shows that many legal problems affect the social and economic classes more or less equally/The special survey done for the English Royal Commission said for instance that in matters which did not concern property 'the profile of users of lawyers' services by socio- economic group is not greatly different from that of the adult population in general'. ( Report of the Royal Commission on Legal Services, Cmnd. 7648, Vol. 2, p. 205, para. 8.115). Insofar as private practitioners already possess the know-how to handle the legal problems of the poor, it is obviously sensible to employ that experience rather than to establish new offices with different lawyers. This is the more true since experience shows that salaried service in law centres tends to attract young, enthusiastic but necessarily inexperienced lawyers whereas legal aid via private practitioners makes use of the full range of experience in the profession. In the United States for instance most legal services to the poor are provided by the few thousand young neighbourhood law firm lawyers. In England by contrast legal aid is provided by many more thousands of solicitors and barristers, including most of the leaders of the profession. Even Queen's Counsel derive a considerable proportion of their earnings from legal aid work. I therefore think it very unfortunate that the Irish Government's proposed civil legal aid scheme should be based entirely on salaried lawyers (full-time or part-time), and that the recommendation of the Pringle Committee for a mixed system using law centres and private practitioners should have been rejected. I am a great supporter of law centres and regard them as an essential feature of a developed legal aid system but I do not believe that they should be used to shoulder the main burden of civil legal aid. Indeed, I am convinced that if they are used in this way one risks losing the main virtue of the law centre concept. First, it fails to make use of the huge resource of the private profession which is more or less geographically spread to provide a service to the public. Secondly, the law centres will as a result be swamped by the kind of work that traditionally comes into solicitors' offices and as a result will have little time to undertake the even more valuable work for the broader community which law centres in England at least see as their main raison d'etre. Government's Unease I sense in the Irish Government's scheme a distinct unease about legal services that go beyond the narrowest confines of the relationship between the lawyer and an individual client. The applicant would be refused a certificate for legal aid it is said if he is acting in a representative capacity or where numerous persons have an interest or where the application is not made in the sole interest of the applicant but 'is of a kind commonly

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