“THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER”

Published date01 May 1979
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1979.tb01536.x
Date01 May 1979
THE GRASS
IS
ALWAYS
GREENER
INTRODUCTION
IT
is perhaps unfortunate that Rosalind Brooke chose
to
use
a
comparative framework for her article,’ since the old adage which
forms the title
of
this comment, together with the equally well-
known one to the effect that
familiarity breeds contempt
seem
both to be appropriate.
Ms.
Brooke is a serious and well-informed
critic of the provision of legal services in England and Wales, but
if
a
commentator from Canada were to do in this country what she
admits to having done in Canada, namely to concentrate on
structural and administrative changes in statutory legal aid
together with the key sectors of recent legislation and the terms of
reference of committees of inquiry into legal aid,” such a person
might well reach the conclusion that we, in Britain, were forging
ahead very successfully. For example the effect on legal aid of recent
changes in procedure relating to the divorce laws is far in advance
of Canadian thinking. Equally the fact that the 1972 Legal Aid
8c
Assistance Act allows for the setting up of more Law Centres,would
seem to the unquestioning reader to be progress indeed-imple-
mentation is another matter.
Using official and semi-official documents as a source of infor-
mation inevitably leads to claims based upon
law
in
the books
rather than
law in action.” Three small examples drawn from her
paper will suffice. First, at the time of Quebec’s new Legal Aid Act
(1972) there were
11
local corporations (privately funded clinics
with citizen control) and the Act provided for more. By 1976 how-
ever, this number had dropped to
3
and the main one, Pointe St.
Charles, feared that funds would not be forthcoming for the
following year. Furthermore all the non-legal staff (community
workers, paralegals, lay advocates etc.) had left and the three
remaining students were available for one semester only. As one
of the two full-time lawyers told me:
The Commission is starving
us.”
A
second example concerns
Ms.
Brooke’s reference to
interest-
ing research that has been undertaken in Quebec in recent ycars.’’
True the Legal Services Commission employs a research staff and
some useful work has been done. Equally significant however,
is
the
fact that the researchers have been refused permission to carry out
a study of lawyers in legal aid offices
because two-thirds
of
them
(approximately
200)
are unionised
and it was feared that such work
would be used as
a
new means of controlling them.
Thirdly, the fact that a Legal Services Commission was set
up
in
British Columbia following the Report of the Justice Development
29
1
-
.:a1 Serviccs in Canada,” Rosalind
Brook
(1977)
40
M.L.R.
533.

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