[Fighting Banana Slug]

Originally Posted by MBates

I disagree with your assertion that I "won't like it" responding to a tired and uninformed shot at the mythical evil legal aid lawyers getting unreasonably wealthy (by offering their services to help disadvantaged people for a fraction of what they could offer the same services on the open market). I am happy to help correct misinformation about the justice system and the legal profession. I like to think it is kind of what I do by posting here.

Technically speaking the government is not obligated to provide any particular legal aid program (it is one of the few places where public money spent returns multiples back in return on investment though...so having a sophisticated arms-length program is invaluable to the justice system remaining functional).

What the government is obligated to do in many criminal and other cases where liberty and security of the person interests are at stake is to provide state-funded legal counsel.

So, if the government dismantles a reasonably well-running legal aid program they will still be on the hook for paying for most of the same legal services, but now a highly inefficient and resource intensive case by case litigation process (using actual court time and government lawyers who would otherwise be doing other work) will replace the current administrative out of court legal aid process.

It will cost the taxpayer far more more in direct legal fees, unnecessarily waste vast amounts of court time, delay all civil and family matters while criminal matters draw an even more inordinate share of the available resources, and cause many criminal lawyers' businesses to suffer (and encourage them to leave the practice area and potentially the province - though that very last part is hard to assess how significant of a risk that is).

All for no apparent reason.

As to the comment about legal aid being able to somehow just charge whatever it wants to the government for legal fees, that is just not how anything works.

There are financial eligibility guidelines that severely limit how many people can qualify for legal aid, a set tariff of fees that can be charged by lawyers which is all subject to review and audit, and after the massive raise that took job action to get, the notional hourly rate that is allowed to be charged (where the tariff even allows hourly billing which is almost never) is $125. Keep in mind of course, from that $125 per hour a lawyer must pay all of the costs of running a highly regulated and costly to operate small business. In many circumstances, once all of the unpaid work is factored in, a lawyer working on a legal aid certificate will fail to make minimum wage.

So to be clear, Legal Aid Alberta is an arms length administrator of the government program. The government funds legal aid (up until now through an orderly Governance Agreement that sets out rights and responsibilities of the parties) and then Legal Aid Alberta takes care of all the intake, eligibility assessments, issuing coverage certificates, maintaining a mix of staff counsel and a roster of private lawyers willing to actually do the work to help the clients who qualify etc, and reports back to the Minister and is subject to the oversight of the Auditor General.

There was absolutely no missing oversight power that the government suddenly needed to secure to protect the taxpayer. The Minister already had it...but subject to basic aspects of fairness including the independence of Legal Aid Alberta to make decisions free from being dictated by the Minister (who of course is the party litigating one side of criminal and most other cases where liberty and security of the person interests are at issue).

It remains to be seen where this impasse goes, but the volume of legal cases that are very efficiently processed through the system every day by lawyers being organized through Legal Aid Alberta is staggering. The system simply cannot function if that flow is stopped.

Originally Posted by GullFoss

I don't understand how changing the funding system makes Legal Aid Alberta unviable. They have an operating surplus...

Much ado about nothing imo

Hmmm. How to choose between these two opinions? I can’t tell if one is based on research, data and experience, and the other is talking out of his ass.