Lawyers provide crucial voluntary legal services, write NOELINE BLACKWELLand LARRY DONNELLY
FOR THE past number of months, members of the Irish legal profession – barristers as well as solicitors – have been subjected to an extraordinary level of scrutiny.
This scrutiny has brought to light a number of extremely sympathetic personal stories from individuals who, for a variety of reasons and in a wide array of contexts, feel victimised by the law, lawyers and the legal system in Ireland.
The legal profession has come under such strict scrutiny in what was already a very difficult period. The shocking behaviour of a small number during the Celtic Tiger era has provoked such outrage that a large number of Irish people regard lawyers with nothing but contempt.
Moreover, the future of the legal profession – indeed, its very existence as we have always known it – is now in question, given the urgent demands for change instigated by the “troika”, a representative of which recently claimed Ireland’s legal profession and its costs needed to be brought “into the 21st century”.
The recently published Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011 proposes a number of far-reaching reforms.
Meanwhile, however, there is a side to the legal profession which is separate from the negativity and uncertainty that currently seems to surround it. The Free Legal Advice Centres (Flac) is one of seven independent, not-for-profit law bodies which, together with Ballymun Community Law Centre, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council, the Irish Traveller Movement, the Mercy Law Resource Centre and Northside Community Law Centre, work full-time with marginalised, disadvantaged and vulnerable people to protect their rights and to ensure access to the law, fair hearings and appropriate outcomes.
In addition, those of us who work in Flac and in its offspring, the Public Interest Law Alliance (PILA), are fortunate enough to see and benefit from all of the good things that hundreds of Irish lawyers do on a voluntary or pro bono basis every day.
Flac’s drop-in centres throughout the country, which have been in operation for more than 40 years now, are maintained by volunteer solicitors and barristers who willingly give of their time, energy and expertise to provide basic legal information and advice to thousands of people who need it. These lawyers do so in the evenings after they finish up at the “day job” and before they go home to their own lives and families.
Statistics indicate the demand for their services is higher than ever in these very difficult times. Apart from the numbers, there is the very human dimension of the extremely distressful situations that so many advice-seekers and their families currently find themselves in.
Flac volunteers communicate in a broad sense to us just how widespread and deep is the grief that literally thousands of visitors to Flac centres are experiencing because of financial hardship and related problems. As human beings, not just as lawyers, volunteers find it a challenge to stay above the suffering they witness at first hand. Yet they continue to turn up night after night in centres in every part of Ireland. Public Interest Law Alliance has a slightly different remit, but like Flac it would not exist if it were not for the goodwill of so many lawyers in this country.
The alloance spends a considerable amount of its time assessing the ongoing, unmet legal needs of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with the most marginalised, disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and individuals in Irish society.
These needs, which the (NGOs) themselves have no resources to tackle, range from legal information and education to legal advice, legal support for organisational policy, and campaigning endeavours.
Staff members of these NGOs often do not have legal training –or are too busy fighting fires on the coalface for those on whose behalf they advocate – to consider the wider legal implications of situations, or how the law might be another effective tool in their work.
The alliance, at the same time, has reached out to barristers, solicitors and law firms of all sizes asking them to help address NGOs’ ongoing, unmet legal needs.
The response of the legal profession, to put it mildly, has been heartening.
From highly regarded barristers who draft comprehensive opinions and then evangelise about the merits of pro bono work to their colleagues, to boutique law firms with niche areas of expertise who present legal education sessions to cross-sections of committed advocates and activists, to large law firms whose internationally recognised personnel give legal advice on complex issues, the breadth of pro bono legal services currently being provided through PILA is inspiring, and a credit to the many lawyers who are involved. Again, the beneficiaries of their professional skill are staff and service users of NGOs working to address the most profound and vexing problems facing Irish society in 2011.
None of the foregoing is intended as an attempt to shield or defend the legal profession from the criticism it has received from various quarters. Lawyers are very well able to do that themselves.
It is intended as something of a rebuttal to the current discourse, shaped as it is by a penchant for dwelling on the negative. It is also worthwhile to accentuate the positive.
Noeline Blackwell is director general of the Free Legal Advice Centres (Flac – see www.flac.ie), and Larry Donnelly is manager of Public Interest Law Alliance, a project of Flac ( see www.pila.ie)