Obtaining and Financing Legal Advice and Representation

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Obtaining and Financing Legal Advice and Representation

Within the civil courts there are several ways by which people can

obtain free legal advice. These include solicitors who may offer free

legal advice, however, the time period may be restricted to half an

hour or so, and this is usually done to attract customers. Some

solicitors may charge a small fee, or not offer this service at all.

Law centres offer legal advice to people in great need, i.e. their

income is low, etc… Law centres deal mainly with claims related to

welfare, discrimination, housing and employment matters, and are

usually very accessible and offer suitable opening hours where

possible. Citizens' Advice Bureaux are available throughout the

country and offer a substantional amount of free legal advice to

everyone. This service is very useful for free legal advice as

Citizens' Advice Bureaux's are placed within many very accessible

areas around the country.

If any person is a member of a trade union or motoring organisation

etc… they can usually get free legal advice. This service is good, as

it will tend to be specialised towards certain areas of law that

affects the person, e.g. if you have a car crash, motoring

organisations will offer the best legal advice as it is what they are

specialised in.

Some universities run Law Clinics that offer free legal advice. The

only problem is the standard of the advice, as it may not be as high

as advice given from other sources as students sometimes run them.

Other sources of advice include the Internet, which is now more

advanced than ever offering many sources of information and advice for

anyone. There are...

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...high. It is however

quite hard for the government to raise the boundaries, as it is hard

to obtain the money to pay for more people to have free legal

representation and support.

Although there are many advantages to the current system, the

disadvantages do outweigh them, and so a new system that is more

suitable should be introduced, or improvements to the current system

brought in. It is however hard to raise enough money for raised

boundaries on means tests, and it is also hard to think of a suitable

replacement for the current system as all ideas will exclude or not

aid some or groups of people.

So until a newer system that can be introduced to offer free legal aid

to more people without exceeding the budget, the current system is

suitable, but will need to be improved or changed for the benefit of

all.

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