It is the right of every Australian in every state to be represented by a lawyer should they be charged with a serious offence and face a court. The law is very explicit. Should they be unable to fund a lawyer of their choice, one will be appointed and paid from public funds.
While Legal Aid NSW's in-house lawyers provide free legal help to the most disadvantaged over seventy percent of legal aid work is farmed out to private lawyers. When a newly minted lawyer is admitted to the bar it is with the understanding that they will accept their fair share of legal aid cases.
In some cases a person charged may have the good luck to draw a lawyer who is famous in his or her field and who usually appears for the rich and famous, but more often this duty falls to someone entering the profession and lacking court experience. That is simply the luck of the draw and all who can legally call themselves a lawyer have the training to appear and argue a case in a courtroom.
The problem has been the rates of pay that apply. The legal profession complains that rewards for legal aid cases are so low that lawyers doing this work earn less than the legal minimum wage when actual working hours and overheads are taken into account.
The NSW government has agreed to an $88 million funding boost for Legal Aid and the base hourly rate for private solicitors of $150 per hour will increase by $10 from July 1 and further increase to $ 195 a hour by 2023/4. A new alternative is now in place where Legal Aid lawyers are rewarded with a lump sum for taking on Legal Aid cases. and this is intended to cover representation for less serious criminal cases in the local and children's courts.This lump sum is intended to cover all preparation and hearing time, excluding prison visits and further funding will only be available in " the most extraordinary cases ".
That lump sum scale has been set at $1100 and many lawyers comment that this will actually be a fee reduction in all but the most minor and non-contentious cases. The legal work often entails finding missing witnesses and building a compelling case for a non guilty verdict. This lump sum puts a severe limitation on what research is possible.
Of course there is a very big difference in representing a person who has been wrongly charged and needs to prove innocence, and representing those " guilty as charged.". Good tactical advice will often see an early guilty plea result in some charges dropped and a more lenient prison outcome, but each case is different and that lump sum does dictate the extent of work possible.
The main point of Legal Aid is to ensure that those totally ignorant of the law gets some degree of professional advice and guidance in how they present their defence. The law has vey much devolved into what is termed " plea bargaining " and a trained lawyer can be the intermediary between the accused and the prosecution in negotiating an acceptable mix of charges and pleas.
At best, Legal Aid is the difference between all the power being in the hands of the prosecution and the accused being well advised on how or what defence would best suits their needs. It ensures that both side in the courtroom proceed according to the procedure of the law and the accused is not disadvantaged by his or her ignorance of the law.
No comments:
Post a Comment