Vancouver lawyers refusing to take legal aid cases
Posted July 7, 2014 7:15 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A lack of funding for BC legal aid is prompting a group of local lawyers to withdraw their services for the next month.
Co-chair of the Legal Aid Action Committee Birgit Eder says they hope to underline how wasteful the system is with so many unrepresented people in court.
“Looking into the future, starting in October for the first week of every calender month, we are planning service blackouts of the same nature and they are much more widespread, not just in Vancouver and Kamloops,” she warns.
“We have made attempts to schedule no new matters to keep the judges as idle as possible and that is one of the ways we underline how wasteful it is to have judges have to deal with all these unrepresented accused,” she explains.
The group says only those with enough money to pay for a lawyer are being served properly in the current legal system.
