For litigants who can't afford lawyers due to limited economic conditions, or litigants involved in special cases, there are relevant laws and regulations that can apply for legal aid, that is, legal institutions established by the government organize lawyers to provide legal services to litigants who apply for assistance and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests. Then, how to allocate legal aid cases? The following reasons are for your answer.
How to allocate legal aid cases
One is to realize the continuity of legal aid on the premise of facilitating the connection of legal aid cases.
Legal aid cases include both litigation cases and non-litigation cases, including both civil cases and criminal cases. Civil cases are divided into non-litigation agents and litigation agents. Non-litigation cases include arbitration agency, administrative reconsideration, reconciliation and mediation. If they refuse to accept the ruling or fail to reach an agreement, they will be sent to the first, second or even retrial. In each case, if they meet the conditions of legal aid, they can be given legal aid. There are three stages in criminal cases: investigation, examination and prosecution, and public prosecution. The litigation stage is divided into two levels: first instance and second instance. According to the Criminal Procedure Law, a criminal suspect may entrust a defender to participate in the lawsuit from the first interrogation or compulsory measures taken by the investigated organ, and the victim may also entrust an agent to file an incidental civil lawsuit in order to safeguard his legitimate rights and interests. Whether it is a criminal case or a civil case, the assignment of legal aid cases at this stage is carried out in stages without clear provisions of the law, that is, non-litigation cases, litigation cases, investigation stages, review and prosecution stages, and the first instance, second instance and retrial are assigned to issue assignment letters respectively. In practice, in order to ensure the continuity of the case, the following measures are taken:
(1) First-aid responsibility system. In principle, if a non-litigation case or a case assigned by the first instance enters the litigation procedure and an appeal is filed to start the second instance procedure, the person designated for the first time will continue to represent the litigation. In order to improve the efficiency of case conclusion, no lawyer will be appointed separately, and the original attorney will continue to represent the litigation.
(2) The responsibility system of first inquiry, in which social lawyers provide free legal advice to clients in law firms, and if they think that economic difficulties meet the conditions of legal aid and assist clients in handling legal aid, in principle, they designate lawyers who provide free legal advice as agents.
(3) For cases where detention centers, criminal police brigades, procuratorates and other legal aid workstations designate contact lawyers to provide legal advice to detainees and then apply for legal aid or participate in handling specific petition cases, designate the designated contact lawyers or lawyers involved in handling petition cases as agents.
(4) According to the arrangement of the legal aid center, the social lawyers on duty in the legal aid center provide legal advice for the parties free of charge during their duty. If the parties meet the conditions for legal aid, the lawyers on duty shall be appointed to handle it on their behalf.
(5) Serving as a service lawyer of the contact village (community) in the double-innovation activities, providing free legal advice to the villagers (residents) of the contact village (community) and assisting the villagers in handling legal aid. If the legal aid center meets the conditions for legal aid, in principle, a service lawyer shall be appointed to provide legal aid.
Second, it is conducive to the balanced development of legal aid and the full coverage of legal aid.
At present, the city and district implement counterpart management of law firms, and the assignment of legal aid can only be undertaken by directly managed law firms or legal services, which restricts the all-round development of legal aid. Appropriately expand the legal aid team and improve the quality of legal aid. Restricted by the level of jurisdiction, the lawyers selected by the parties are lawyers of municipal law firms, and the District Legal Aid Center has no right to assign them to municipal law firms. You can only choose or advise the parties to apply to the municipal legal aid center within the scope of lawyers in the district law firm, and you can't realize the wishes of the parties to choose lawyers. Secondly, a large number of legal aid cases are assigned by county legal aid. In the case of serious shortage of funds for legal aid, for appeal cases, due to the limitation of funds for handling legal aid cases in the district, it is usually suggested that the parties concerned apply for legal aid from the municipal legal aid center, and the municipal legal aid can only be handled by lawyers of the municipal law firm alone, which cannot achieve the continuity of aid cases.
There are also some problems in actual operation. In the absence of clear provisions in the current legal aid laws and regulations, it is suggested to expand the scope of legal aid assignment, include all law firms willing to provide legal aid into district legal aid volunteers, and give appropriate tilt to the municipal legal aid funds to make up for the shortage of legal aid funds.
Three, on the premise of safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the parties, to achieve a good social order.
In the work of the legal aid center, faced with complicated and difficult cases such as collective wage demands, visits and lawsuits of migrant workers, the legal aid center should, on the one hand, do a good job in the ideological work of the parties to prevent the situation from expanding, on the other hand, help their legitimate demands and guide them to realize their demands through legal channels. When allocating, we should consider not only the ability of the lawyers who undertake the work, but also the lawyers with strong sense of responsibility.
(a) for group dispute cases, the legal aid center should not only stabilize the mood of the parties in time, answer patiently and prevent the situation from expanding, but also assign lawyers with strong sense of responsibility and certain political consciousness to handle them, so that the legal aid center can keep abreast of the progress of the case;
(two) for different types of cases, the classification and assignment are handled differently. Although lawyers and grassroots legal workers are both legal workers, there are certain differences in the types of cases they undertake and their ability to apply the law. In terms of distribution, all criminal cases or cases related to criminal cases, whether it is the victim's criminal incidental civil lawsuit or the agent of other civil parts, are not assigned by grassroots legal workers. Cases with clear basic legal facts, clear legal relationship and little controversy can be assigned to grassroots legal services, and other complicated and difficult cases can be assigned to law firms;
(3) The legal aid center shall assign lawyers to participate in the reception and handling of letters and visits in a timely manner according to the case. Because the participating lawyers have been involved in the case in advance and have a clear grasp of the facts of the case, they will be appointed as agents on the premise that the legal opinions are recognized by the parties. If there are a large number of class actions (more than 20), consider appointing two lawyers as the same agent;
(4) According to the actual situation of the legal aid center, the legal aid center currently has public lawyers 1 person, who are mainly responsible for legal consultation, review, registration and online entry of legal aid cases. Their own work tasks are heavy, and they actually do not undertake the agency work of specific legal aid cases. All legal aid cases are assigned to law firms, and at the same time, going to the government to ask public lawyers not to accept legal aid subsidies has seriously weakened the enthusiasm of public lawyers in handling legal aid cases;
(5) In the case of legal aid, if the agents or defenders of both parties to the case cannot be lawyers of the same law firm, attention should be paid to the situation that both parties apply for legal aid or the other party represents the case when reviewing the assignment, so as to avoid the situation that one lawyer represents the same case.
The above is the relevant legal provisions. For those involved in limited economic conditions or special cases, they have the right to enjoy free legal aid provided by the government to protect their basic legitimate rights and interests. However, there are still a series of regulations on the assignment of legal aid cases. The above is the relevant answer about how to allocate legal aid cases, and I hope it will help you.