Participating in the “Actualization of Rights and Entitlements in Achieving SDGs-2030”, as chief guest, Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, Judge Supreme Court of India and Executive Chairman, National Legal Services Authority stressed the need for lawyers with experence taking up probono legal work. The relevant portion of the speech is below.
Is it that 99% of our general population doesn’t want legal aid or they don’t aspire to be given the benefit of legal aid? There could be two reasons. (1) Most of them are not even aware that that it is their constitutional right to be provided, to be afforded free legal aid or (2) Second part is more dangerous but perhaps they don’t have confidence in the setup or in the machinery of legal aid.
We need to do a lot of self introspection. Perhaps our qualitative assistance must be over greater order. Just as I gave you the example of a child who is entitled to have quality education, similarly every beneficiary is entitled to have good quality legal aid. Legal aid to the poor does not mean poor legal aid. It has to be of a better quality, better standard and better level. That’s why the programs like this, SOP to have training manual for panel advocates and so on and so forth are steps in that direction.
Merely training the panel lawyers merely spending money on that, will that be sufficient?. Will that be the complete answer to the problem? The answer to the problem lies in the fact that some of the leading advocates at the bar, senior advocates must take up legal aid as a matter of choice as a matter of practice and keep on appearing in matters pro bono so that the man who comes through the door of the legal aid service clinic is assured that it’s not going to be an affair which will be botched up but it’s quality legal aid which will be extended to him. Once we develop that atmosphere, then this outreach program will have tremendous amount of response. Outreach program yes at one level that we must actually make ourselves known. We must teach them that yes you have a right. But merely teaching them will not be the final and complete solution unless and until when it comes to court based legal assistance. Because we as say national legal Services Authority or Karnataka state legal Services Authority, we can only provide an apparatus.
The final legal aid when it comes to court based litigation has to be done through the lawyers in question. Therefore large and larger number of lawyers must get associated; good quality lawyers must get associated. People must come forward to do pro bono work. The moment we do that, that will actually bring in the atmosphere inculcate the habit and will correspondingly generate an atmosphere of confidence in the minds of general public that yes legal aid is the Raja Marga to the Courts of law rather than being some kind of a back entrance to the courts of law.
Link to YouTube video. https://youtu.be/1AMCfo-bYjE
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