China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Taking legal aid to the grassroots
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Ministry of Justice is improving people’s access to representation in civil and criminal cases, f it wasn’t for lawyer Shen, who helped us obtain the compensation for my daughter’s death, we wouldn’t know how to go on living,” 60-year-old Ran Gang said, tears falling down his cheeks.
In March 2016, Ran’s 21-year-old daughter, Ran Guangqiong, was knocked down by logs while working at the Yanshan sawmill, in Wenshan prefecture, Yunnan province. She died at the scene.
Her grieving parents were dealt another blow when their daughter’s boss shirked his responsibility for the workplace accident and refused to pay compensation.
Their appeals to the authorities, including the public security and justice departments, failed. Four months after their daughters death, the despairing parents turned to Shen Linke, a lawyer from Nanjing Wenyang Law Firm, for help.
Since 2015, Shen, who has been working as a lawyer for 12 years, has been offering free legal aid to the residents of Wenshan county, where she is the only qualified lawyer.
“Watching their blank and helpless expressions, I immediately realized my duty as a lawyer is to make every effort to help those in vulnerable groups strive for their rights,” she said.
Shen then contacted the boss and communicated with him many times before he agreed to pay 608,000 yuan ($89,350) in compensation, in three installments over two months.
But after paying 470,000 yuan, he refused to pay the remaining money, and Shen sued him in Yanshan County People’s Court.
Through mediation by the judges before the court hearing, they finally reached an agreement and the boss paid the parents the remaining 138,000 yuan in January last year.
“We lacked legal knowledge and didn’t know how to safeguard our rights through judicial proceedings,” Ran Guangzao, the victim’s brother, said. “The free legal aid service solved a big problem for us and led us to the light.”
Shen said, “As a lawyer, I don’t worry about earning money, but the priority is to assume my responsibility to do something more meaningful and help those in need as much as possible, then to defuse their complaints and bring them hope and courage.
“At the grassroots, I see with my own eyes and experience a lot, and I deeply understand the major role we play when becoming legal aid lawyers.”
Dire shortage
Data provided by the Ministry of Justice show legal aid centers reporting to local justice departments concluded 1.31 million legal aid cases last year, and offered aid to 1.39 million people. Meanwhile, the amount of legal aid funding reached 1.8 billion yuan last year, an increase of 5 percent compared with 2016.
But in China’s vast western and northern areas, there is a dire shortage of legal resources and there are more than 300 poverty-stricken counties with no lawyer providing any legal service, said Hu Zhanshan, secretary-general of the China Legal Aid Foundation.
In a sign of the country’s uneven distribution of legal resources, less than 10,000 of its 320,000 lawyers work in underdeveloped central and western regions, he said.
In 2009, the Ministry of Justice launched a legal aid volunteer project called One Plus One, aiming to send at least one qualified lawyer and a volunteer university law student to China’s poverty-stricken areas in 13 provinces and regions, including Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai provinces, as well as the country’s five autonomous regions.
The legal aid program has helped to “promote fairness and justice, which is related to people’s vital interests and social harmony and stability”, the deputy director of the ministry’s legal aid department, Lin Xi, said.
She said the ministry has been trying to improve the 14-year-old legal aid system, and one of the big moves is to “lower the threshold and expand the number of people who can receive free legal aid in a bid to protect their legitimate rights”.
Free legal aid has been offered nationwide to people from special groups — such as the elderly, women, minors, the disabled and migrant workers — who are involved in civil disputes, criminal cases and those involving livelihood issues such as marriage and family affairs, food safety, education and healthcare, Lin said, adding that poor people who cannot afford a lawyer are also eligible.
She said nearly 80 percent of the cases handled by legal aid services were civil ones, with most involving payment and employment disputes, marriage and domestic affairs or traffic accidents. Others were criminal cases and administrative litigation.
In addition to expanding the number of people eligible for legal aid, another measure attracting attention is the broadening of access to legal aid.
The ministry said 4,000 legal aid centers have been established across the country, with more than 5,000 lawyers providing free legal aid services, including offering legal consultations, representation in criminal cases and mediation in civil disputes.
It plans to set up more legal aid work stations in towns, counties and villages to offer free legal services to local villagers.
Those unable to travel easily, such as the elderly and the disabled, can use a hotline, 12348, or the websites of local legal aid departments to apply for the services, said Zhang Hongsheng, a press officer from the ministry’s legal aid department.
According to statistics provided by the ministry, 8.5 million people applied for legal assistance last year, with many of them seeking consultations through the websites or hotline.
In Beijing and the provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong, judicial administrative departments regularly publicize legal aid information on their micro blogs or WeChat accounts. Zhang said some lawyers also offer legal consulting on the social media platforms.
Draft law
Lin said in order to move the legal aid programs forward, the ministry is in advanced negotiations with other authorities to speed up the introduction of the country’s first legal aid law.
It has finished the drafting of the law and it will now be passed on to the National People’s Congress for review. When enacted, Lin said the “appropriate authorities will clarify their tasks and work closely to improve the quality and professionalism of legal assistance and protect people’s legitimate rights”.
She said authorities including the Ministry of Finance set aside funds to support the legal aid program and increase the subsidies given to lawyers offering legal assistance. At present, lawyers offering legal aid services in most of the country only receive 3,300 yuan in subsidies a month, while those in plateau areas, such as the Tibet autonomous region and Qinghai province, receive 3,800 yuan.
In addition, a yearlong pilot program in eight provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Henan and Guangdong, that has assigned criminal defense lawyers to represent defendants in criminal cases if they don’t have a lawyer to protect their human rights, will be expanded nationwide.
Previously, if those accused of a crime were minors, disabled or had mental problems or if they might face execution reports. or life imprisonment and had not hired a lawyer, the courts would arrange for the legal aid centers to send lawyers for them.
“After summing up the successful experiences in pilot areas, we will expand the program nationwide” Zhou Yuansheng, director of the ministry’s Department of Directing Lawyers and Notarization, said.
He said that after the expansion, legal aid lawyers will handle an estimated 400,000 criminal defense cases a year.
“Offering a full criminal defense to the accused is considered a major incentive to promote judicial reform and will play an essential role in safeguarding the suspects’ legitimate rights, effectively avoiding wrong judgments in cases,” Zhou said.
Li Wei, a lawyer from the Beijing Lawyers Association, said legal aid is an important livelihood project and the purpose of improving legal aid is to “expand the scope of free aid services and improve its quality so that eligible people will get legal aid and have equal access to justice”.
legal aid centers have been established across the country, staffed by more than 5,000 lawyers