Khmelnytsky oblast secondary legal aid bureau was created in the course of further development of Public Defender’s Office in Khmelnytsky
On October 11, 2012 the first Secondary Legal Aid Bureau (thereinafter – the Bureau) was launched in Khmelnytsky. According to the Order of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine similar legal aid bureaus are going to be launched till the end of 2012 in all regions of Ukraine, in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, in Kyiv and Sebastopol.
Khmelnytsky oblast secondary legal aid bureau was created in the course of further development of Public Defender’s Office in Khmelnytsky. The Office had been functioning as a pilot project with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation’s Rule of Law Program since November 1, 2007.
Natalya Vagina, the Public Defender’s Office’s Head was appointed to run Khmelnytsky Oblast Secondary Legal Aid Bureau. At present, in accordance with the first round of free legal aid lawyers selection, 86 lawyers have been selected in Khmelnytskyy region; 35 of them stated that they were willing to work as full-time lawyers.
The Bureau will provide free legal aid for all detained individuals before the moment of the first interrogation at the police station and at other stages of the criminal proceedings as well as within the cases where the involvement of a defense lawyer is mandatory.
Public Defender Offices, whose work since their inception was focused on data collection and analysis, in the course of their activities have become the only source of information for the free legal aid system reform. This information deals with practices of free legal aid delivery in compliance with international standards; with the problems the government may face and will face while creating this new system; with the specific approaches to organizing the activities, their benefits and drawbacks.
The practical experience of Public Defender Offices has become especially useful in the course of creating the national free legal aid system by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and after adoption of the Law on Free Legal Aid on June 2, 2011. The efficient cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and pro-active role of the lawyers of the pilot Offices allowed identifying and implementing the approaches tested at pilot projects while creating the national system, particularly:
– Approach to free legal aid lawyers selection: open request for applications based on voluntary involvement of a lawyer in the system and providing the opportunity to evaluate not only professional skills and experience of the lawyers, but their motivation level to work within the system
– The formats of cooperation with the lawyers: full-time to ensure efficient 24-hour lawyers’ availability and part-time to regulate the workload and to involve lawyers in conflict of interests’ cases and to identify lawyers in distant locations
– Management system: drafting administrative procedures how to accept and distribute the cases, to supervise the workload and working time accounting, to create a digital database of the cases flow in the office
– Procedures of interaction with the law enforcement bodies to ensure the earliest access of a lawyer to a detainee: the need in immediate informing the Office by police officers and arrival of a lawyer within two hours since the moment of receiving the message
– Approaches to calculating the lawyer fees: based on the assessments of the average time spent by the Offices’ lawyers on certain types of cases; they take into account the coefficient of a case’s complexity, number of counts and the spent time.
– Quality assurance mechanism: internal monitoring by the Head of the Office and external monitoring by the hired lawyers-evaluators.
While the first Secondary Legal Aid Bureau was opened, the Ministry of Justice, International Renaissance Foundation and Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation signed the trilateral Memorandum.
The Parties made a declaration on the need to implement high standards of free legal aid delivery in the course of founding the national system and on the need in common efforts by government bodies and non-government organizations both while building the system and while monitoring the delivered aid’s efficiency and quality.
Since January 1, 2013 a defense lawyer in criminal proceedings shall be assigned in compliance with the newly adopted Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine through the mechanism included into the Law of Ukraine “On Free Legal Aid”. Seeking to attain this purpose since January 1, 2013, the network of the free secondary legal aid bureaus will start to operate in Ukraine; their activities will be coordinated by the central body – Legal Aid Coordination Center established by the Government’s Decree in June 2012. In 2013 there are plans to create 45 inter-district free secondary legal aid bureaus. In 2014 24 bureaus in oblast and Republican cities will be founded.
Contacts:
Rule of Law Program
Roman Romanov
(+38 044) 482 03 63
romanov@irf.ua
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The aim of the Rule of Law Program is to support the civil society initiatives directed to the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, to promote strengthened legal consciousness and public activity at the central and local levels.
