The costs of
legal aid administration reduced by # 3.1 million, when calculated on a cash basis; although total administration costs rose by # 3.3 million, largely due to the development of the widely criticised CCMS system for civil applications and bill processing, which will now not become mandatory until February 2016.
Legal
aid administrations come in all sorts of shapes and sizes — from the minimalist sub-departments of Ministries in New Zealand and England and Wales to the independent management role of the US Legal Services Corporation (LSC).
Self - help representation is an area where the work of
legal aid administrations may, in some jurisdictions, say California, blends into responsibilities assumed by the courts themselves.
Quality assurance and legal needs surveys are just two practices which have gone round the world — very largely because of the existing of the International Legal Aid Group which since 1992 has held conferences that seek to bring together a wide range of legal
aid administrations and academics.
Legal
aid administrations all have limited funding and, thereby, limited opportunity for innovation.
The report also proposed: ensuring all benefit recipients automatically qualify for legal aid; restoring legal aid for all matters concerning legal support for children; simplification of legal
aid administration; and the re-establishment of early legal advice, particularly for family law.
This means that in administering a law or making regulations to
aid the administration of laws, a Minister of the Crown or an administrative body such as an agency or tribunal can not make a decision or a regulation that infringes on our Charter rights.
A further complication may yet arise in terms of the increasing involvement in the courts of commercial «McKenzie friend» providers of limited assistance short of legal representation: they may raise questions of regulation and quality which were formerly dealt with by the Law Society, the legal
aid administration and the concern for reputation of organisations involved in pro bono provision.
The crucial difference between our position and that of BC is that, unlike by Chris Grayling and the Legal
Aid Administration, cuts were not seen as an end in themselves.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert Bauserman,
AIDS Administration / Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 500 North Calvert Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202.