35 Facts About Legal aid

Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system.

Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial.

Legal aid is essential to guaranteeing equal access to justice for all, as provided for by Article 6.

Legal aid has a close relationship with the welfare state, and the provision of legal aid by a state is influenced by attitudes towards welfare.

Legal aid is a welfare provision by the state to people who could otherwise not afford counsel from the legal system.

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Legal aid helps to ensure that welfare provisions are enforced by providing people entitled to welfare provisions, such as social housing, with access to legal advice and the courts.

Jurists such as Mauro Cappelletti argue that legal aid is essential in providing individuals with access to justice, by allowing the individual legal enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights.

Legal aid's views developed in the second half of the 20th century, when democracies with capitalist economies established liberal welfare states that focused on the individual.

Legal aid schemes were established, as it was assumed that the state had a responsibility to assist those engaged in legal disputes, but they initially focused primarily on family law and divorce.

Mechanisms emerged through which citizens could legally enforce their economic, social and cultural rights, and welfare lawyers used legal aid to advise those on low income when dealing with state officials.

Legal aid was extended from family law to a wide range of economic, social and cultural rights.

Legal aid was increasingly provided through private providers, but they remained focused on providing assistance in court cases.

Historically legal aid has its roots in the right to counsel and right to a fair trial movement of the 19th-century continental European countries.

Legal aid became driven by what lawyers could offer to meet the "legal needs" of those they have identified as poor, marginalised or discriminated against.

Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union provides that legal aid will be made available to those who lack sufficient resources, in so far as such aid is necessary to ensure effective access to justice.

Legal aid in Italy is a service to allow everyone to be assisted by a lawyer or by an expert witness free of any legal fees or costs in all criminal, civil, administrative, accounting or fiscal proceeding and "voluntary jurisdiction" and whenever the presence of a lawyer or expert witness is required by law.

Legal aid is granted for all grades or stages of the trial, including all further connected incidental and contingent proceedings.

Legal aid was originally established by the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949.

Criminal legal aid is generally provided through private firms of solicitors and barristers in private practice.

Civil legal aid is provided through solicitors and barristers in private practice but by lawyers working in Law Centres and not-for-profit advice agencies.

Disabled people disputing benefit claims are usually denied legal aid forcing them to deal with complex and distressing cases without help.

Legal aid noted that before the introduction of LASPO, England and Wales were spending £39 per head of the population on legal aid compared with only £8 per head in New Zealand.

Wilson said cuts to legal aid prevent the disadvantaged from exercising their human rights.

Lord Dyson sLegal aid this has led to vulnerable people representing themselves in court, with many defendants paying towards their defence.

Nimrod Ben-Cnaan of the Law Centres Network, maintained the legal aid market was, "failing" since cuts, "shattered local ecologies of advice, " and that it is vital law centres are rebuilt.

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Philip Alston said that legal aid had become considerably less available in England and Wales from 2012, which had, "overwhelmingly affected the poor and people with disabilities, many of whom cannot otherwise afford to challenge benefit denials or reductions and are thus effectively deprived of their human rights to a remedy".

Whilst legal aid lawyers are funded by the legal aid agency, it can sometimes take years for payments to come through to them.

Legal aid is in principle available for all civil actions in the Court of Session and Sheriff Court in Scotland, with the significant exception of actions of defamation.

In Canada, the modern system of legal aid developed after the federal government instituted a system of cost-sharing between the federal and provincial governments in the early 1970s.

Actual delivery of legal aid is by the provincial level of government, as part of provincial jurisdiction over the administration of justice.

Legal aid in criminal cases is a universal right guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Defendants under criminal prosecution who cannot afford to hire an attorney are not only guaranteed legal aid related to the charges, but they are guaranteed legal representation, either in the form of public defenders, or in absence of provisions for such or due to case overloads, a court-appointed attorney.

However, legal aid is not provided in civil suits, nor deportation procedures, as these are not criminal proceedings.

The ultimate object of the Government is that legal aid be readily and equally available to citizens everywhere in Australia and that aid be extended for advice and assistance of litigation as well as for litigation in all legal categories and in all courts.

Legal aid is available for almost all court actions across all levels of the court system.