Legal Research

$150m More Legal Aid for Ontario

By Omar Ha-Redeye

There has been a legal aid boycott in Ontario by senior lawyers, protesting underfunding of the service in the province, especially for complex cases.

A report by Prof. Michael Code of UofT and the Hon. Patrick LeSage commissioned by the Attorney General of Ontario found that the previous system was placing cases in the hands of lawyers who were probably inadequately prepared to deal with them.

The Attorney General has responded to these issues by pledging an additional $150 million over the next four years for legal aid, a 21% increase, the largest in its history.  Min. Bentley said,

We’re going to establish a working advisory group with the lawyers that are doing these cases to come up with a better approach to funding the defence of the large cases.

A new case management system will help build up expertise for complex trials to ensure that highly qualified counsel are handling them.

Details of the announcment will be made available Tuesday.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 05, 2009 (boomark / email).