Legal Aid Services Research Articles

Making Noncitizenss Rights Real: Evidence from Legal Services Fraud Complaints

Noncitizens applying for green cards and employment authorization encounter a bureaucratic labyrinth: limited information, costly fees, and fear of coming out of the shadows all create incentives to defraud immigrants as they pursue legal services to navigate the U.S. immigration system. This paper is the first empirical study of legal services crime targeting immigrants. It explores the county level determinants of legal service fraud complaints submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and answers the question: where are noncitizens most likely to claim their rights of territorial membership by reporting these crimes? Results indicate that immigration scams were brought to the attention of the FTC more often in counties with a strong safety net, measure by above-average food stamp use among Hispanic households. Free legal aid services for immigrants can also make a difference in bringing immigration scams to light, while high deportation rates and Republican governments are associated with places where fewer legal services crimes were reported than one might expect based on noncitizen population size alone. This suggests not only that claims to justice tend to emerge in place where immigrant integration efforts have taken hold but also reveals an unintended consequence: places which prioritize deporting noncitizens are more likely to allow the crimes committed against them to go unpunished.

The Protection to Victims of Violence Based on Gender as a Fulfillment of the Constitutional Rights in the Perspective of Human Rights in Boyolali's District, Indonesia

Cases of Gender-based violence increase from year to year and this raises concerns. The phenomenon that puts Boyolali as the district with the highest number of gender-based violence to former residency Surakarta need for follow up. This study aims to get information form of protection and the efforts that have been undertaken by the government of Boyolali District to meet the Constitutional Rights for victims of gender-based violence in Boyolali; Fulfillment of Constitutional Rights for victims of violence against women by the government of Boyolali Regency, among others; Complaint service spread in 19 districts in Boyolali District. Social Rehabilitation Services are given by officers and social rehabilitation. Spiritual guidance services provided by Spiritual guidance counselors are trained for women andChild victims of violence in the integrated service unit. Law enforcement from the level of investigation to court decisions on cases of violence against women and children has been carried out according to the procedure. Legal aid service to women and children of victims of violence. Repatriation of women and children Victims of violence. According to standard that has been set in SPM by 75%. Social re-integration services for women and child victims of violence, according to standards set out in the SPM at 100%

Access to Justice through Legal Aid: A Study in Bangladesh

Equal access to justice for the rich and poor alike is prerequisite to the maintenance of the rule of law. But the justice system through judicial administration is very costly in Bangladesh and that cost has been the most difficult factor for the poor and vulnerable sectors of people in case of getting justice. Thus an adequate legal aid system is one of the effective ways to ensure access to justice as well as to establish rule of law. In this paper attempts have been made to examine the present condition of the legal aid services in Bangladesh, the establishment and functions of the different legal aid committees but, importance is especially given to the local govt. level where legal aid services are provided by the District, Upazila and Union Legal Aid Committees. The study compares the role of the govt. and non- govt. organizations in dissemination of legal aid services among the people who do not manage themselves to get proper remedy due to various limitations and discriminations. After reviewing the collected data and analysis of these, it has observed that the cases to which legal aid services are provided include both the civil and criminal matters and the cases relating to family affairs. Finally conclusion is drawn after evaluating the activities of the aforesaid organizations and by making substantial recommendations to the concerned authority.

The Legal Aid Council in Nigeria: Challenges and Possible Solutions

Justice is the bedrock of peace and tranquillity in every society. Justice cannot be guaranteed when there is no access to court, fair hearing and fundamental rights due to financial constraint. The people of each country have contracted their power to their government to secure their rights and interests. Therefore it is incumbent on the government to strive towards equality before the law. One of the means to secure this is through availing indigent people free legal aid services. In Nigeria, the Legal Aid Council was established to serve the needy. Aside from the government legal aid service, there are several voluntary legal aid services. Despite the services, the bias of the Nigerian legal system to the detriment of the poor people is not quenched. This work then looks at the background of the legal aid service in Nigeria, challenges and the possible solutions to serve as corrective tools for the lacunae in the present legal aid service in the country.

Legal Aid for Ensuring Access to Justice in Bangladesh: A Paradox?

AbstractThis article examines the government-funded legal aid system of Bangladesh. It indicates that the Bangladeshi legal aid system is lacking in terms of both legal provisions and the actual performance of the Legal Aid Services Act. The inadequacies in the implementation of the Act even raise the concern of whether the government has any intention to use the legal system to improve the condition of the poor or whether it intends to establish a legal aid system that is directed to providing mere lip service to the poor. The Bangladeshi legal aid system is therefore in a paradox; the state has established an institution that exposes its drawbacks and is not able to meet the needs of the beneficiaries. The article finally makes recommendations in order to redress the deficiencies of the system and thus to ensure effective access to justice for those who are in need of the service.

How effective is legal aid service in China

This paper empirically observes the effectiveness of legal aid service in today’s China through a field study with 845 interviews in four districts of Shanxi province and six districts of Henan province in 2014. Interviews have been conducted with all relevant groups of actors in the field of legal aid. The target groups include: 1) current clients of legal aid (250 interviews), 2) former clients (250 interviews), 3) citizens (as potential clients of legal aid, 201 interviews), and 4) service providers (incl. legal aid staff, private lawyers and non-profit organization staff, 144 interviews). The effectiveness of legal aid service will be examined from following dimensions, i.e. availability of the legal aid, qualification of service delivery, outcome of the legal aid cases, satisfaction of the clients regarding the outcome, clients’ experience with the service delivery, public support in handing legal aid cases and understanding between clients and service providers. The findings suggest that legal aid in China is a positive development; however, some problematic issues such as a lack of transparency of financial threshold remain to be improved.

Womens Attitude towards Violence against Women in Relation to Legal Aid Service Interventions in Morogoro Rural and Kongwa Districts, Tanzania

Understanding of women?s attitude toward Gender Based Violence (GBV) against Women in the context of LAS is crucial for effective utilization of the service and prevention strategies. Thus this study examines attitude of women towards GBV against women with regards to their involvement in Legal Aid Services (LAS) interventions in Morogoro Rural and Kongwa districts. Quantitative data were collected using a structured questionnaire while qualitative data from KIIs and FGDs were collected using interview guides. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were done using SPSS. A Likert scale was used to measure attitude of women towards GBV against women. Mann Whitney U test was used to determine differences in women?s attitude towards GBV against women in relation to LASs between LAS beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Also, ordinal logistic regression was employed to determine the effects of LAS intervention on attitude of women towards GBV against women. Overall, 58.3% of the women had negative attitude towards GBV against women, while 32.9% of the women had positive attitude. Generally, the attitude towards GBV against women was statistically different (p < 0.05) between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of LAS interventions. Involvement of women in LAS interventions and ethnic background were found to be stronger predictors of attitude of women towards GBV against women. It is recommended that LAS providers should arrange more sensitization campaigns and education sessions on human and women?s legal rights. The campaign should involve all communities focusing on raising awareness about existing myths fuelling GBV against women based on cultural background.

Psychiatric social workers in legal aid services in hospitals: Exploring roles in Indian context

Mental health and legal problems are interlinked in many ways. People facing legal issues may develop mental health problems, and people with mental illness and family also face legal issues. In India, Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 gives provision for free legal aid services for the poor sections of society. Authors explain the roles of psychiatric social workers in legal aid services in hospitals. Social case work as a method of social work is suitable in legal aid services. Counseling, referrals, collateral contacts, advocacy and networking are major services from the social work perspective. Knowledge about laws and mental illness is essential for social workers to work in legal aid clinics (LACs).

Legal Aid Service Interventions and Women Empowerment: A Case of Morogoro Rural and Kongwa Districts, Tanzania

Legal Aid Service (LAS) intervention is considered to have an influence on women empowerment through raising awareness of women towards their rights. Using Kongwa and Morogoro Rural districts as study areas, a study was conducted involving 240 women (120 beneficiaries and 120 non-beneficiaries of LAS). A cross-sectional research design was used, whereby random selection of respondents was done. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. A Composite Empowerment Index (CEI) was used to measure the extent of women empowerment among beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of LAS interventions. Women in the study areas were categorized at medium level of empowerment. Beneficiaries of LAS interventions were found to be more empowered relative to their counterparts. Ordinal logistic regression analysis results showed that involvement of women in LAS interventions, awareness of women legal rights, marital status and age at first marriage were the most determinant factors that influence women empowerment in Morogoro Rural and Kongwa district. Hence persistent sensitization of women about their rights is critical for reducing violence against them and ultimately achieving high levels of empowerment. Also, rigorous enforcement of existing laws and policies is required to discourage and ultimately eliminate the practice of early marriage.

Do legal empowerment activities of NGOs reduce gender-based violence in Bangladesh?

This article explores the role of NGOs' legal aid activities in empowering women and reducing gender-based violence in Bangladesh. For collecting primary data, a field survey was conducted in Bangladesh, where come to work (CTW) provides legal aid services. It implements a number of activities. The list of its activities include conducting human right education sessions, supporting community people to establish a people's organisation, sensitisation of the elite people and establishing a network with national level organisations to deal with the gender 'cases' at courts. As an outcome of these activities, women have become more knowledgeable about their legal rights. Moreover, people's organisations have been founded overseeing informal justice, for making sure that women are receiving proper justice. This paper reveals that a comprehensive approach developed by the NGOs for empowering women legally has been successful in reducing gender-based violence in a patriarchal society of Bangladesh.

Do legal empowerment activities of NGOs reduce gender-based violence in Bangladesh?

This article explores the role of NGOs' legal aid activities in empowering women and reducing gender-based violence in Bangladesh. For collecting primary data, a field survey was conducted in Bangladesh, where come to work (CTW) provides legal aid services. It implements a number of activities. The list of its activities include conducting human right education sessions, supporting community people to establish a people's organisation, sensitisation of the elite people and establishing a network with national level organisations to deal with the gender 'cases' at courts. As an outcome of these activities, women have become more knowledgeable about their legal rights. Moreover, people's organisations have been founded overseeing informal justice, for making sure that women are receiving proper justice. This paper reveals that a comprehensive approach developed by the NGOs for empowering women legally has been successful in reducing gender-based violence in a patriarchal society of Bangladesh.

Charlottesville-Albemarle Legal Aid Society (a)

This case deals with the situation facing the new director of the Charlottesville Legal Aid Society, a federally supported nonprofit organization chartered to provide legal services in noncriminal cases for low-income people. Legal Aid has entered a challenging time in its history: funding is decreasing while demand for services is growing. The new director is struggling with how to forge a new strategy for the organization in an environment where resources are stretched thin and stakeholders are not in agreement about where the organization's efforts should be focused. The case explores the process of strategy formulation in the context of multiple stakeholder groups, and raises issues of strategic intent, value creation, working with professionals, and collaborating within a large network. Excerpt UVA-BP-0377 Charlottesville-Albemarle Legal Aid Society (A) Alex Gulotta, newly appointed director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Legal Aid Society was in the midst of drafting his first director's report. He wrote: As the program's new director, I have been overwhelmed by the warm welcome extended to me by the legal community, the social services community, and the client community. From my discussions with community leaders, it is clear that the Charlottesville-Albemarle Legal Aid Society is well respected for it advocacy on behalf of those in need. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the need for Legal Aid services continues to outstrip our ability to respond. The program's attempt to provide some level of individual service to all income-eligible clients increasingly limits the time available to respond to each problem. As resources are taxed, the program's advocates are forced to react to client dilemmas rather than to actively work toward long-term solutions. Legal Aid is approaching the new fiscal year with the hope and energy occasioned by change. Our goal is to turn a very good legal services program into one of the very best. . . .

Legal Aid, Social Workers, and the Redefinition of the Legal Profession in Chile, 1925–1960

This article examines the history of the Chilean Legal Aid Service (Servicio de Asistencia Judicial) from the 1920s until the 1960s. It argues that with the emergence of the “social question”—the concern for improving the lower classes' working and living conditions to promote the nation's modernization and prevent political radicalization—the Chilean legal profession committed to legal aid reform to escape a professional identity crisis. Legal aid allowed lawyers to claim they had a new “social function” advocating on behalf of the poor. However, within legal aid offices, lawyers interacted with female social workers who acted as gatekeepers, mediators, and translators between the lawyers and the poor. This gendered professional complementarity in legal aid offices helped lawyers to put limits on their new “social function”: it allowed them to maintain legal aid as a part-time activity that did not challenge the structure of the legal system as a whole.

Integration of legal aid activity in law school curriculum: an overview of Bangladesh and India

If law students at the formative stage of their career are exposed to legal aid services, they become motivated to deliver the service when they enter into professional life. The purpose of the present article is to examine the current status of Bangladeshi legal education with regard to the integration of legal aid activity in law school curricula from an international human rights perspective. The article also compares the Bangladeshi legal education with the Indian practice. The article indicates that Bangladeshi students are not adequately motivated, through academic exercise, to use the law for the poor people. As a result, they learn to become mere lawyers to fight legal cases without acquiring adequate service-mindedness to serve the poor people of the community. The article finally recommends that legal education in Bangladesh is required to explore the potentials of clinical legal education with a compulsory component of legal aid programme. Moreover, Bangladesh can learn from the standard practices of the Indian law schools.

Into the Wild

A law degree differs from many other tertiary degrees in that completion of the degree and the requisite professional post graduate requirements enables the holder of the degree to seek employment in the legal profession. Graduates of most other disciplines do not have the same advantage. The fact that the discipline of law is directly connected with a profession should mean university law courses include more experiential opportunities than some other disciplines. Law Schools have been good at providing students with experiences outside of the lecture room, which relate directly to the practice of the law. These experiences include court and gaol visits, opportunities to meet with members of the judiciary and legal practitioners and, in many cases, to see clients in law clinics run in conjunction with legal aid services or pro bono law firm participation, or the lower level courts.

PERANAN MAHASISWA FAKULTAS HUKUM SEBAGAI PELAKSANA BANTUAN HUKUM (LEGAL AID) KEPADA MASYARAKAT

The role of law students in the implementation of legal aid is divided into two, namely the implementation of legal aid litigation and non-litigation legal aid. The role of students in the provision of legal aid services, urgent existence, considering many people who are not capable of, marginalized and legally blind in Indonesia is difficult to get access to justice, especially a dense population and spread across a wide area so it is not proportional to the number Advocates are available and include high student awareness of the legal issues faced by the community/communities are not able to. Students have contributed significantly in their communities by providing legal aid services, running the advocacy work and organizing in their communities in order to encourage growth is growing awareness of the laws of society and realize access to justice (acces to justice) for everyone, especially people not being able to obtain a guarantee in the fulfillment of their rights as citizens, especially equality before the law (equality before the law) as mandated by the constitution in Article 28D paragraph (1) and Article 28H paragraph (2) of the constitution of 1945 .Keywords: Student, Legal Aid, Role

A powerful toof of justice: Paralegals and the provision of affordable and accessible legal services

In many parts of Africa, a quiet revolution is transforming the delivery of legal assistance to pre-trial detainees and accused persons. Too poor to afford the services of a lawyer, and unable to rely on inadequate – or nonexistent – state-funded legal aid systems, many Africans are at the mercy of often oppressive and corrupt criminal justice systems. This is beginning to change as paralegals – who are less expensive and more accessible than lawyers – are empowering the poor and marginalised in their interactions with police, prosecutors, and the courts. In almost two dozen countries across Africa, paralegals are providing a critical service, particularly in the early stages of the criminal justice process. They provide primary legal aid services that often no one else is providing, which in turn results in the elimination of unnecessary pre-trial detention, the speedy processing of cases, diversion of young offenders, and reduction of case backlogs. Some paralegal services also provide food and medical supplies to people in detention. They may also be present at police stations in order to deter ill-treatment and forced confessions. Paralegals play a valuable role in reducing prison overcrowding by locating the family members of pre-trial detainees and facilitating bail hearings. This article gives an overview of paralegal services in a number of African countries, and shows how these services are assisting thousands of pretrial detainees and accused persons to access justice in environments where legal services are scarce or non-existent.

Bhasin v. Hrynew: A New Era for Good Faith in Canadian Employment Law, or Just Tinkering at the Margins?

In Commonwealth Bank of Australia v. Barker the High Court of Australia refused to impose an implied duty of mutual trust and confidence into the employment contract, reasoning that doing so would take the Court beyond its legitimate authority. Issued two months later, the Supreme Court of Canada went in a different direction. In Bhasin v. Hrynew, the Court crafted a new substantive doctrine of honest contractual performance, based on a newly-recognized central organizing principle of good faith in contract law. A few months later the Court applied the organizing principle of good faith to circumscribe the exercise of an employer’s discretion in Potter v. New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission. This article offers an assessment of the potential impact of Bhasin and Potter on the future direction of Canadian employment law.

Gender Based Violence and Legal Aid Services Interventions among Rural Women in Morogoro Rural and Kongwa Districts, Tanzania

Several initiatives have been implemented to promote human rights targeting women. Despite, Legal Aid Services (LAS) provided to women, violation of human rights manifested in the form of Gender Based Violence (GBV) is still high among women globally, regionally and Tanzania in particular. Using Freire’s theory, this paper analyses the contribution of LAS interventions to combat GBV incidents among rural women. The study involved 240 rural women in Morogoro Rural and Kongwa Districts. Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) Version 16 was used to analyze the data. A GBV index was constructed indicating levels of GBV in the study areas. Women in the study areas were experiencing a medium level of GBV. Wife battery, deprivation of basic necessities and marital rape were the most common forms of GBV practised in the study areas. Generally, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of LAS experienced some forms of GBV regardless of their involvement in LAS interventions. However, Mann-Whitney U test revealed a significant difference in the actions taken against perpetrators of GBV for beneficiaries (Md = 5, n = 98) and for non-beneficiaries (Md = 2, n = 95), U =2837, Z = -4.730, p = 0.000, r = 0.3. The distinguished differences might be related to the acquired knowledge through LAS intervention on women’s legal rights education. Hence, the knowledge inspires them to take legal actions of reporting GBV incidents. These results have implication on changing the odds of GBV status. Therefore, the government and LAS stakeholders should put more emphasis on raising awareness about women’s legal right education and publicizing the availability of LAS providers, particularly at the grassroots level where the majority is less informed.

Health Justice Partnerships (HJP): Working Ethically to Reach Those in Most Need of Legal and Medical Support &amp; to Improve Outcomes Research Evidence, a Seminar for City, University of London (Law School) 13 September, 2016, London (Presentation Slides)

This presentation will examine the emergence of Health Justice Partnerships (HJP) in Australia and will discuss some of the ethical dilemmas and resolutions of these dilemmas that have emerged during Dr. Curran's action research evaluations. A Health Justice Partnerships (HJP) sees a partnership between a legal assistance (or legal aid) service and health services (including allied health services). Empirical research sees unresolved legal problems lead to poor health outcomes. In Australia and the UK those most likely to have multiple legal problems are the poor and disadvantaged and figures say only 13% - 16 % get help. In HJP the focus is on problem solving for client/patients with often complex and multiple problems and solving these in a holistic way through integrating legal and non-legal services to enable client access and seamless assistance. This presentation will also discuss the ethical issues and how these have been resolved due to the holistic client focus of all the professionals in the HJP examined.