Chapter III
221
5. allocation of adequate budgetary funding for the system, as well as organizational, technical, material,
and personnel resources;
6. identification of the criteria for determining the need in subsidized legal aid;
7. ensuring the availability of state-guaranteed legal aid programs;
8. the criteria for determining the wages of lawyers attracted to work in this system;
9. coordination of the providers of guaranteed legal aid services;
10. legal education and legal awareness raising on free legal aid issues;
11. maintaining the national registry of persons providing subsidized legal assistance; and
12. legal groundwork, which requires the development of draft laws and regulations, such as the following:
•
Law on State-Guaranteed Legal Aid;
•
Law on Introduction of Amendments and Additions to the Code of Civil Procedure, Code on
Administrative Offences, Code of Criminal Procedure, Criminal Code, and the Law on Legal Practice
concerning state-guaranteed legal aid issues;
•
Public Policy Program in the field of legal education and legal awareness;
•
Provision on the authorized institution for state-guaranteed legal aid (conventionally referred to as, for
example, the National Council of the Republic Kazakhstan on State-Guaranteed Legal Aid (hereinafter
“the National Council”);
•
Provision on the structure of the National Council;
•
Provision on the territorial offices of the National Council (for example, bureau, service, center, etc.);
•
Provision on the lawyers competition for providing state-guaranteed legal aid;
•
Provision on the primary legal aid procedure;
•
Provision on the emergency legal aid procedure;
•
Provision on the procedure of appointing a counsel to provide immediate legal aid;
•
Provision on the secondary legal aid procedure;
•
Rules for calculating the income of the individuals applying for state-guaranteed legal aid; and
•
Rules on the procedure and the amount of remuneration for providing state-guaranteed competent
legal aid, as well as some other acts.
FREE LEGAL AID IN KAZAKHSTAN
222
13. the development of draft unified subsidiary legal acts (for example, applications for competent legal
aid; model declaration of income and property, the agreement on legal aid services, a query of the
authority conducting criminal proceedings for competent legal aid; decisions of the territorial offices
on provision of legal aid; profiles of legal aid provision, the reports of the lawyers providing legal aid,
reports of the territorial office on its activities and the use of funds allocated to legal aid, etc.);
14. possible expediency of primary legal aid delivered by professional lawyers at no cost (
pro bono),
paralegals, also within the framework of public and other organizations; and
15. adoption of the Memorandum on the Standards of the Legal Profession, and on the Legal Ethics
Code to be followed by all practitioners and their associations, communities and other bodies whose
activities are related to the practice of law;
II. Setting up a model system of providing subsidized legal aid that should look as follows:
1. System for Management (Administration) of Subsidized State Legal Aid.
Most importantly, the system should be independent. Its functions should include the development and
implementation of the free legal aid policies, organization, supervising and ensuring the effectiveness of the
system, as well as the allocation of public funds to provide free legal aid, by provision of annual funding. As
international acts (e.g. Article 2.3, ICCPR) provide for the state’s responsibility for ensuring the right to (free)
legal aid, the executive bodies of the government should be responsible for these functions. This conclusion
is proved by the case law of the ECHR, many of whose decisions state that the responsibility for any violation
of Article 6.3(c) of the ECHR should be borne by the state represented by the Government, as the supreme
executive body.
Therefore, the System for Management (Administration) of Subsidized State Legal Aid should include
the following components:
1. the Ministry of Justice of Kazakhstan;
2. the National Council of the Republic Kazakhstan on State-Guaranteed Legal Aid (hereinafter “the
National Council”);
3. territorial offices for provision of subsidized legal aid;
4. maslikhats; and
5. the bar associations.
The Ministry of Justice, as the leading agency responsible for the public policy process, should be charged with
organization and ensuring the functioning of the subsidized legal aid system.
The National Council, as an independent collegiate body, consisting of 5-7 members (representatives of the
interested parties – lawyers, NGOs, academics, officials of the Ministry of Justice, social agency workers, that
Chapter III
223
is, persons working within the legal aid system, etc.) should be responsible for the implementation of legal
aid public policies and the management (administration) of the process of subsidized legal aid. The executive
office of the National Council would carry out its activities.
The territorial offices of the National Council, which should be established in the regions as per the
administrative-territorial principle (in the cities and districts) should be in charge of organizing and providing
subsidized legal aid. Their activities should be based on a mixed model.
The maslikhats should be responsible for providing organizational support to primary legal aid.
The bar associations should be responsible for quality assurance and control of subsidized legal aid,
development of the criteria for selection of the lawyers to participate in the competition for providing
subsidized legal aid, etc.
Special mention should be given to the need for an independent collegiate body – the National Council. This
body is needed as it should be independent not only from the government agencies, but also from the legal
community represented by bar associations. If this body is established within some existing public structure,
it will be impossible to ensure its independence in the cases where one of the parties is represented by the
state agency.
Similarly, the bar association may not be neutral with respect to its members for the following reasons. First,
the bar associations will not be able to effectively manage the legal aid system, as they will have to perform
two conflicting functions which cannot be entrusted to one institution, namely: they will act as a provider of
legal aid services, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they will have to manage the budgetary funds:
distribute and pay for this aid, monitor their own activities, namely the appropriate funding and the quality
of the legal aid, etc. As shown by the experience of the countries in which subsidized legal aid is applied, the
major part of the expenditure is spent on paying the employees who perform managerial functions such as
developing and verifying the eligibility criteria, records keeping, determining the amount of work done by
a counsel, reporting, collecting statistics, etc. As such functions are attributed to managers, they cannot be
given to the bar, because otherwise they will conflict with the essence of the legal nature of the bar, whose
main purpose is to provide and organize only the legal aid. Moreover, the lawyers are prohibited from holding
gainful occupations except in the field of training, research or creative activities (Article 15.6, Law on Legal
Practice).
Secondly, the bar associations are supposed to protect their members in performing legal practice (Article
20.4.1, Law on Legal Practice), and therefore they cannot remain neutral with respect to their members when
they provide subsidized legal aid.
Thirdly, when providing free legal aid, the bar association is focused only on the organization of legal aid
which is clearly set forth in Article 20.4 of the Law on Legal Practice. This implies that the bar association is
not entitled to take on managerial functions as the main purpose of the legal profession is only to facilitate
the implementation of the state-guaranteed constitutional right of the people to legal protection of their
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: |