A legal aid lawyer is a lawyer who will provide specific services on behalf of a client at no cost. The government will pay all or part of your legal costs when you are unable to afford paying for those costs yourself. To be eligible to hire such kind of lawyer service, you need to provide proof of your inability to pay. The services they can provide to a client include helping a client with legal documents, providing legal advice and assistance to the client, and actually representing the client in court.
A lawyer that provides legal aid usually does not get paid as much as a lawyer who practices at a private law firm. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) directly provides the money needed to help eligible clients. The money is funded by the treasury and the Ministry of Justice oversees the work of the LSC.Even the Best Criminal Lawyer for Legal Aid in Surrey and elsewhere must have a contract with the LSC to be able to provide help to clients. As a result, those lawyers who provide such services do not get paid directly by their clients as lawyers employed by commercial law firms do, but rather by the LSC through the ministry.
This service in England was established by the legal Aid and Advice Act 1949. Such kind of lawyers are available to about 29% of adults. Their services can be accessed for many different types of legal cases, including many types of criminal cases and many types of civil cases including family cases.
Before 2004, legal aid lawyers were not allowed to represent defendants in defamation cases, as was the case in the McDonald's Corp. vs. Steel (a.k.a. McLibel) case. The European Court of Human Rights determined in July 2004 that the defendants in that case were not allowed a fair trial due to the lack of legal aid lawyers, and as a result, from then on, lawyers providing such kind of services are allowed to work on the behalf of defendants in defamation lawsuits, provided that the defendants could show that they did not have the financial means to hire their own legal counsel.
Therefore, if your rights are being violated and you don't have the money to hire your own legal counsel, you may be eligible to have a legal aid lawyer to help you take your case to court and win to protect your rights.