by Mark Benton

The Legal Services Society (LSS) recently relaxed restrictions that had limited most legal aid representation services in family law to matters involving violence or the potential removal of children from the province.

We now provide financially eligible people with representation for several issues that previously required approval under the society’s exception review process. We made the change because we found we had been granting this service for most clients who face issues such as serious denial of access to children or imprisonment as a result of maintenance enforcement committal proceedings.

This is the latest in a series of family law developments that include providing duty counsel in the courts, limited referrals that allow lawyers to unbundle services for clients who can’t avoid going to Supreme Court (e.g., those with cases involving property or variation of an existing order), and extended referrals where lawyers are funded to take high conflict cases to trial.

Since 2002, LSS has re-focused its work to test and implement innovative ways to provide clients with the type of service most likely to help them achieve the earliest possible resolution to their legal problems. While serious gaps in family services remain, LSS new advice and information services are meeting a significant number of client needs. In 2005/2006 alone, some 204 lawyers handled more than 18,700 family duty counsel issues at 46 Provincial Courts and 13 Supreme Courts; LawLINE responded to over 6,500 calls on family matters; and visits to the Family Law in B.C. website increased by 41 per cent over the previous year. In addition, 446 lawyers accepted legal aid referrals to represent clients in more than 4,500 family law cases.

Nonetheless, spending for family law last year was lower than we had projected. In part, this was due to start-up difficulties for this year’s roll out of Supreme Court Duty Counsel in some locations. In addition, we have so far have been unable to attract the number of limited Supreme Court referrals we had projected. As well, private lawyer billings were down for preparation hours in regular cases and we received fewer than anticipated requests from lawyers to access extended services for clients with high conflict cases.

Earlier this year, the society initiated a review of all its family law services to help identify where to direct LSS resources and determine which services should be expanded, and how. This work involves interviewing family law clients to evaluate LSS representation, advice, self-help, and information serv-ices, and find out how people deal with issues over time, including what happens when problems re-emerge.

We anticipate making further family law improvements once we have received and assessed the final results of this review, which should be available in September. In the meantime, we encourage private lawyers to take advantage of the various legal aid services available on behalf of their clients. More information about these services is available on the LSS website (www.lss.bc.ca/Newsroom/Fact_sheets.asp).

Mark Benton, Executive Director, Legal Services Society (LSS)

This article was published in the August 2006 issue of BarTalk. © 2006 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.