The Gazette 1984

GAZETTE

MARCH 1984

the USA, providing well-organised and effective free legal assistance. University law schools are another source of free legal help. Most now have clinical programmes which seek to give law students practical experience before they graduate; under supervision by experienced practitioners they are permitted to appear in many courts. At UCLA Law School, the professor in charge of the clinical programme was previously the director of the Western Centre on Law and Poverty. The clinical programmes are often integrated with local legal aid offices, and some students go on to be employed with them after qualifying. Public Defender The legal aid programmes funded by the Legal Services Corporation, and the other organisations which have been mentioned, rarely undertake criminal cases. The Legal Services Corporation by its governing statute is prohibited from funding them. In many cities and States, however, there are public defender schemes funded by the appropriate government. There are also federal public defender schemes for those facing criminal charges in federal courts. In California, approximately 90% of all criminal defences are handled by the State Public Defender office, and the lawyers who work in it are generally very highly regarded for competence, indepen- dence and integrity. As in the case of cirminal legal aid in Britain, it is the court which determines in each case whether the accused should be defended at public expense. If so, the public defender will normally be assigned, but some private attorneys may be instructed at public expense where, for example, there are conflicts between co-defendants. There is evidence that the cost per case of the public defender office is very considerably

lower than the cost of instructing private attorneys. Contrasts From this necessarily superficial survey, some striking contrasts stand out. In the USA public funding of legal services, though less proportionately than in Britain, is used almost entirely for salaried lawyers employed by community based organisations. In Britain, only a handful of salaried lawyers (outside industry and the Government's internal legal service) are to be found in the law centres and a few advice agencies. The Benson Commission did not encourage hopes for a larger salaried sector in Britain. Of course, in the last resort the indepen- dence of salaried lawyers is qualified by reliance on the federal, State or city governments who provide the money, and there is much current anxiety, for example, over attempts by Reagan nominees on the Legal Services Corporation to direct some of its resources towards the private profession. Generally, however, the vastly greater resources of US salaried services have permitted more varied and sophisticated forms of provision. In Britain, legal aid has suffered from the limitation imposed on private practitioners by the need to make a profit and by restraints on competition. On the other hand, the opportunities for economic and professional advancement in a mixed practice result in more legal aid work in Britain being done by more experienced lawyers, though not necessarily the most able, who in both countries are often attracted to salaried service, at least in the early stages of their careers. A major study published in the US in June 1980 by the Legal Service Corporation (the'Delivery Systems Study') concluded that a salaried lawyer system was far more effective than a system based on private practice in

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