A bill tabled Tuesday in the National Assembly aims to increase the supply of legal services for the less well-off: if it is adopted, lawyers and notaries working in non-profit organizations, such as clinics legal, can give them a good boost.
It is not currently possible for these non-profit employment law professionals to provide legal advice and represent vulnerable people in court.
The distinction may seem technical, but it has real impacts. According to the law, only lawyers and notaries who work alone or within joint-stock companies or in general partnerships can perform certain tasks, which excluded professionals employed by community organizations.
They could provide legal information, but not legal advice. In other words, they could explain how the laws work, for example, by detailing to a tenant of a dwelling their rights, but could not give them a personalized legal opinion, which would say for example, “according to your specific situation , you have a good chance of winning your case before the Régie du logement”. And the lawyers working in these non-profit organizations could not go to court to represent those who needed it.
The Bar has been pushing for years for the law to be changed, and thus allow better access to justice, confided in an interview the president of Quebec, Me Catherine Claveau. “It was a bit of an incongruity,” she judges. She finally found the attentive ear of the Minister of Justice Simon Jolin-Barrette.
He tabled Bill 34 on Tuesday afternoon in the National Assembly.
One of the conditions of the bill is that these legal services must be rendered free of charge or at a low cost, explained Mr. Claveau: it must not be at the same rate as that charged in a private practice.
This will help clients who are not eligible for legal aid, but who do not have the means to retain the services of a private lawyer.
For the president, the bill is important because it supports the mission of the Bar, which is the protection of the public. But, she says, the public is protected if they are properly advised, which is what Project 34 seeks to provide. She is hopeful that it will be adopted by the end of the parliamentary session.
Legal clinics and organizations such as Juripop support the bill. The Mobile Legal Clinic even qualifies it as avant-garde. “For vulnerable and deprived people, access to justice is a very complex issue,” said its founder and CEO, Donald Tremblay, in a press release, who believes that it will significantly improve access. to justice in Quebec.