Legal Aid at Last?

en.hukumonline.com | Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - The Indonesian Advocates Association (‘PERADI’) issued a technical regulation last Friday (30/7) that mandates lawyers to provide at least 50 hours of pro bono legal assistance every year.

Some 21,000 PERADI lawyers will be obliged to help the community with legal aid.

“Nearly all members are enthusiastic,” said Legal Aid Center Chairperson, Ahmad Fikri Assegaf, when interviewed by hukumonline (30/7).

“This is the chance [lawyers] have been waiting for,” Mr. Assegaf claimed; “generally our fellow advocates are already involved in legal aid work, but such activities remain unrecorded and undirected.”

Not all would agree: PERADI existed for many years before overcoming the inertia for legal aid’s institutional genesis; and only after a Law [No. 18 of 2003], Government Regulation [No. 83 of 2008], and finally this latest internal regulation.

Even now, there are doubts in the legal community and elsewhere about the implementation of pro bono legal aid.

Firstly, there is no budget as yet to cover costs incurred by giving legal aid—court fees and so on.

Nurkholis Hidayat, the Director of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, also spoke to hukumonline (30/7) about his concern that without sufficient enforcement of sanctions, lawyers would not have sufficient incentive to help more vulnerable groups.

Mr. Assegaf noted that beyond reprimands, sanctions include suspension from practicing law. As for enforcement: “That authority rests with the PERADI Honorary Council.”

Now that pro bono services exist within an internal and external regulatory framework, it may be possible for sanction enforcement to in fact take place, and more optimistically, legal aid along with it.

Eli Moselle / Fathan Qorib