Lawyers take legal aid action

SOME LAWYERS have started to turn away legal aid beneficiaries because they are owed substantial sums by the Government.

But president of the Bar Association, Tariq Khan, said attorneys were not bound by the association’s recent advice to its members not to accept legal aid certificates from the Community Legal Services Department because of the debt that runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We have advised our members not to accept any legal aid assignments because of failure to pay outstanding money over the last two and a half years, but we can’t bind anybody,” he said. “We can simply state our position as an association. Individuals would have to deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”

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