Every couple of years, legal aid administrators from around the world meet with concerned academics. In June, they gathered in Helsinki.
This was less eventful than the previous conference in New Zealand. There, a government minister used his welcoming speech to announce the inquiry that led to the demise of the host organisation and its chief executive. These International Legal Aid Group (ILAG) conferences, socially pleasurable for delegates other than those given notice of their departure, have aided communication and the spread of ideas for almost 20 years. They also provide a good indicator of what is happening around the world.
The major change from previous years was the silence of the English. Since ILAG started meeting in 1992, our Legal Services Commission and Ministry of Justice have been big players. Steve Orchard, the former and still revered chief executive of the Legal Aid Board, attended regularly. Hitherto, at some stage in the proceedings, the English delegation stood up to inform their audience of the latest developments in franchising, competitive tendering, CLACS, CLANS (once touted bodies whose initials no longer merit translation) and the work from the Legal Aid Board/Legal Services Commission in-house research arm.
In 2007, the government even sent solicitor general Vera Baird to attend the ILAG conference in Antwerp.
Alas, we have joined our predecessors, the Americans, as countries that once led the world on legal aid developments. There is little chance of spinning the current cuts as anything other than a slashing of entitlement to the poor and powerless.
Wisely perhaps, no English official tried to do so. In our absence, the Scots emerged in full force. Not without schadenfreude at the sad fate of their cousins south of the border, the Scots set out how they had been able to control their budget and extend eligibility. And they had a point.
The Scots are hoping to deliver their cuts without the draconian slash-and-burn tactics adopted by Kenneth Clarke. Their line is that you can reduce expenditure but not services. In consequence, few Scottish lawyers are great fans of the Scottish Legal Aid Board, which has been happy to squeeze remuneration - use a few public defenders to encourage the profession to keep in line; and tighten up on merits tests for legal aid.
However, Scottish managers claim to have won a significant battle in getting the Scottish government to look at legal aid as an element within the whole justice system and one which has identifiable social and economic benefits. Notably, they have avoided, at least to date, the siren calls of grand gestures like franchising and competitive tendering that so seduced the English without delivering very much.
The conference revealed another new development. The 86 delegates came from 26 countries. Legal aid may be on the ropes in countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and the UK but, elsewhere, albeit from a low base, others are hastening to build their legal aid provision. Brazil, for example, is expanding its national network of public defenders at a rapid rate. China was represented in force at the conference.
The stimulus for many of these other countries is, in one way or another, human rights and the standards of international human rights treaties. Brazil has expressly enacted a statutory commitment to defence of ‘the fundamental rights of the needy encompassing individual, collective, social, economic, cultural and environmental rights’.
For countries in, or aspiring to join, the EU, there is the extra incentive to meet requirements for defence rights in criminal cases because of the EU programme to protect the rights of suspects and defendants. This was one issue on which the otherwise contented Scots were on the back foot - a recent Supreme Court decision has required them belatedly to establish a police station duty solicitor scheme.
The European Convention has, of course, provided some measure of defence for criminal and public law from the current round of English cuts. Overall, international conventions on fair trial rights are beginning to play a larger role both in the expansion and reduction of legal aid services.
Some of the most interesting Helsinki discussion related to the use of new technology and the web. The Dutch government has even invested in a consortium of organisations that run a website named Innovating Justice. This is designed to keep the Dutch at the cutting edge of new developments in the delivery of legal services.
Even more interesting is the development of various forms of online dispute resolution (becoming known as ODR), where the medium becomes the message: the net provides the resolution of the dispute. Understandably, the US leads the world in this area. You can get online legal assistance with sites such as Legal Zoom offering document preparation. Chicago-Kent University has developed a programme, A2j, which goes one step beyond and helps you, should you wish, to build a programme that takes the user through a legal process (for example, changing their name).
This provides an avatar to guide you. At the moment, she is a static cartoon rather than the fully mobile versions that infiltrated Pandora’s Eden in the movie, Avatar. However, things will clearly develop that way.
Helsinki is a pretty agreeable location in which to spend a couple of days reviewing the global direction of legal aid. Finland actually has an excellent legal aid scheme that combines salaried and private providers. Publicly funded legal services have been delivered in Helsinki for over 120 years, probably longer than anywhere else in the world.
For the silenced English, attendance provided all too short a respite from the chill winds that cross our once fertile, but now barren, legal aid landscape.
Roger Smith is director of the law reform and human rights organisation Justice
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