This Tuesday (October 26) the Judicial and Legal Affairs Committee of the Legislative Council held a special meeting. The Chief Secretary for Administration’s Office and its Legal Aid Department sent staff to explain the "Proposed Measures to Improve Hong Kong's Legal Aid System", including assigning every lawyer The number of civil legal aid cases that can be handled by Heda Lawyer has been reduced from 35 and 20 to 30 and 15. Among them, the cases related to judicial review will be limited to 5 and 3, and criminal legal aid cases are also limited. No longer with reference to civil cases, the aided person is allowed to nominate a lawyer on his own.
After the news was released, the Law Society of the Hong Kong University Student Union issued a statement criticizing the authorities for “completely exploiting the opportunity for applicants to nominate lawyers in criminal legal aid cases”, and concerned that the adjustment of the limit for civil cases may “further restrict the free choice of legal representatives for aided persons. right".
As for the representatives of the Bar Association, although the Government’s proposal is welcome in principle, they are also worried that the appointment of lawyers by the Legal Aid Department with a qualification lower than that of the external barrister of the Department of Justice may constitute unfairness.
The selection and appointment period should be unified
The current selection criteria for lawyers appointed by the Legal Aid Department clearly state that “the cases will not be equally distributed to lawyers” and require lawyers to have handled a certain number of related cases in the past three years. All criminal cases are related to medical negligence, professional negligence, and government administration. There were 5 civil cases, including judicial review, and 16 other civil cases.
What is confusing is that the limit for receiving legal aid cases is different. It is calculated based on the number of cases assigned by lawyers in the past 12 months.
Kwong Po-cheong, Director of the Legal Aid Department.
(Photo by Liang Pengwei)
The Department has not explained the reasons for the discrepancy between the selection conditions and the calculation period of the assigned cases, and the latter’s shorter time than the former will undoubtedly reduce the flexibility of lawyers in arranging assistance for cases.
If the case can be accepted in accordance with the eligibility requirements within three years, such as 15 cases per year to 45 cases in three years, I believe that in a short period of time, it is better to avoid the situation that individual applicants nominate lawyers to accept the full amount of cases, but in the long run Said that it will not lead to excessive concentration of legal aid cases to appoint certain lawyers.
Judicial review can still choose lawyers
On the other hand, cases related to judicial review are basically civil in nature, and the proposed reforms do not seem to amend the legal aid regulations that stipulate that aided persons can choose their own lawyers. However, there were 2,474 lawyers on the list of legal aid lawyers last year. Among the 1,161 barristers, only 177 lawyers and 225 barristers meet the qualifications for assigning judicial review cases, accounting for only about 10%.
In this context, if a too strict limit on the number of accepted cases is introduced, it is easy for the applicant to lose the aforementioned statutory rights in disguise.
Many opinions questioned that the legal aid system was abused to submit for judicial review. Most of the relevant cases were local legal residents who challenged the authorities’ policies. However, in fact, judicial review litigation and those applying for legal aid are mainly for non-repatriation claims. The number of approved cases in the past five years is only 6.7%. In addition, the direction of handling non-refoulement claims is significantly different from other general judicial review. Therefore, it seems that the quotas for the two types of judicial review cases should be calculated separately. I believe this will also help. Reduce the embarrassment that recipients cannot choose their favorite legal representatives.
After Pakatan Harapan Liang Meifen.
(Profile picture)
Finally, I have to mention that the legal aid reform is put on the agenda, apart from the fact that its operation involves public funds, the bigger reason I am afraid is that Hong Kong's legal services are too expensive.
The Vice Chairman of the Pakatan Harapan Legislative Council, Leung Mei-fun, said at a meeting of the Legislative Council: “Legal aid is right to help our poor, but Hong Kong’s judicial justice often includes that even the middle class of us dare not go to court.” Therefore, society will continue to do so in the future. We must plan to reduce related expenditures through the development of legal technology and other channels. We cannot expect to rely solely on measures such as legal aid to achieve judicial justice.
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