A Study On The Effectiveness Of Legal Help For Duty Lawyers

Since the launch of the judicial system reform with the optimization of judicial power and resource allocation as the main content and the judicial-centered litigation system reform,the connotation of legal assistance of duty lawyers has undergone great changes compared with the initial project pilot period introduced into China.The main performance is as follows: the scope of legal assistance focuses on criminal cases,the object of assistance is criminal suspects and defendants,and the quality of assistance requires the implementation of "effective" legal assistance.However,in practice,the lawyer on duty is only regarded as a witness,which seriously affects the effectiveness of legal assistance.Therefore,this paper uses the method of empirical research and literature research to build the effectiveness standard of legal assistance for duty lawyers,and uses this standard to measure the current situation of legal assistance practice for duty lawyers,to find out the problems of improving the effectiveness of legal assistance,and to put forward feasible suggestions.The main body of this paper is divided into four parts: The first part explains the meaning and content of "legal assistance" and "effectiveness" in this paper.Combining with practice and legal documents,the author sorts out the connotation and performance of "legal assistance",defines the "effectiveness" described in this paper,and distinguishes related concepts.The second part analyzes the value of justice and efficiency embodied in legal assistance of duty lawyers,and sets up the standard of effectiveness of legal assistance.The standard mainly includes three aspects: the duty lawyer's intervention should be timely,the duty lawyer's legal advice should be pertinent,and the duty lawyer's legal advice should be valid and can be adopted.The third part is the result of applying the standard in the second part to the practice of legal assistance.On the one hand,the author collected and sorted out the literature,intelligence and data on the legal assistance practice of duty lawyers throughout the country.On the other hand,the author selected two legal assistance offices in both municipal and district-level in G city as the specific research objects,and practiced in the two places for a total of one month from June to July in 2019.During this period,the author actually participated in the legal assistance work of duty lawyers,collected the written files of legal assistance,and conducted face-to-face interviews with the lawyers and staff of legal aid organizations who participated in or guided the legal assistance work of duty lawyers.Finally,the author concludes that there are still some problems in the legal assistance practice of duty lawyers in China,as lagging intervention stage,cumbersome procedures,long time interval,lack of pertinence in legal consultation content,incomplete reflection of case facts and case handling,and low adoption rates in legal opinions.The fourth part is the measures to improve the effectiveness of legal assistance for duty lawyers in response to the problems raised in the third part,including improving the system of duty lawyers' intervention,strengthening the special training of duty lawyers,strengthening the coordination and cooperation of case handling organs and increasing the support of state resources.