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Changes to Legal Services Society Services, Administration, and Operations
Between April 1, 2009 and March 26, 2010
Written by Manjeet Chana, Lawyer, Vancouver
Services offered by Legal Services Society (“LSS”) that have been eliminated or reduced:
Family law services:
- Elimination of dispute resolution services (“DRS”): introduced in 2006 as mediation and collaborative services, these services were available to financially eligible clients with significant family law problems who did not qualify for legal aid representation because their cases apparently did not raise safety concerns or qualify as emergency service referrals.Approximately 600 people a year received these services.
- Reduction of extended family services: introduced in 2005 to give lawyers extra time to complete cases.
Criminal law services:
- Elimination of coverage, that is, no legal aid representation for adult category 1 offences, such as breach of probation, failure to appear, and breach of bail, even if the client is facing other outstanding charges or there is a risk of jail.
- Elimination of tiered tariff rates, based on years of experience, for duty counsel, which had been introduced in April 2008.
Immigration and refugee law services:
- Introduction of stricter merit screening of immigration legal aid applications meaning that some cases that would have been covered in the past were not covered after April 1, 2009.
LSS operational and administrative eliminations and reductions include:
- Elimination of 38 staff positions in the Vancouver and Surrey offices including all staff caseload lawyer positions (resulting, for example, in the closure of the LSS family law clinic) and six LawLINE lawyer positions
- Reduction in LawLINE scope resulting in coverage of fewer legal issues
- Reduction of public legal information services due to decreased staffing (reduction in fieldworkers and publications staff)
- Elimination of $40 administration fee that LSS pays to private lawyers to cover the administrative costs lawyers have to pay when they take on a legal aid file
LSS services and operations eliminated or reduced after March 26, 2010
- Closure of the LSS Regional Centres in Kamloops, Prince George, Kelowna, Surrey, and Victoria
- Elimination of all of LSS’s civil non-family legal aid advice services, including LawLINE (staffed with lawyers and paralegals offering free telephone legal advice to low income people across BC), the Community Advocate Support Line (staffed by a lawyer who provides legal supervision, advice, and support to advocates throughout BC), and all but one staff position at the Nanaimo Justice Access Centre
- Elimination of an additional 58 staff positions throughout BC, including all but five of the remaining LSS staff lawyer positions in BC
LSS December 16, 2009 Announcement
On December 16, 2009, LSS provided a media release announcing that the LSS board of directors approved several programs. The media release states:
“Some of the initiatives being introduced reinstate services the society was obliged to eliminate earlier in the year due to insufficient resources, others are new projects, and some provide ongoing funding for projects that were scheduled to end.”
Aside from more criminal and family duty counsel services, it is unclear what these changes may be, where funding is coming from, and when they will be implemented.
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