Duty solicitor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries, a duty solicitor (or, in Canada, a duty counsel) is a solicitor whose services are available to a person either suspected of, or charged with, a criminal offence free of charge (pro bono) if that person does not have access to a solicitor of their own.
[edit] United Kingdom
In England and Wales, there are two duty solicitor schemes which operate in parallel. The police station duty solicitor scheme enables a person who is arrested on suspicion of a criminal offence to consult with a solicitor, either in person or on the telephone (and frequently both) whilst in police custody. This right is most often taken up when the suspect is to be interviewed concerning their suspected involvement in the commission of a crime.
The court duty solicitor scheme allows a person that has already been charged with an offence to consult with and be represented by a solicitor at the Magistrates' Court on their first appearance if they do not have, or simply have not contacted, their own solicitor. The right to see the duty solicitor applies equally to those defendants who are in custody or on bail, but the right is not unlimited – if the defendant is on bail and is charged with an offence that does not carry a sentence of imprisonment the duty solicitor is not obliged to act. This contrasts with the right to advice from the duty solicitor whilst at the police station, which applies irrespective of what the alleged offence may be.
The duty solicitor schemes in the UK are managed by the Legal Services Commission. Each magistrates' court that operates such a scheme will have one or more solicitors allocated to any given court session. The police station schemes have one or more solicitors on duty for each police station, or police area (occasionally covering a number of police stations), depending on how busy the scheme. The busiest scheme in the country, the Central London scheme, has three solicitors on duty at any given time working in 8 hour shifts.
Despite popular suspicion to the contrary, duty solicitors are not "in league" with the police, or in any way connected to them, but are in fact completely independent of them; nor are they in any way inferior to non-duty solicitors. In fact, they are precisely the same people – a solicitor that a defendant may see for free on one day (because he or she happens to be on duty) might charge the same client several hundred pounds for the same advice on another day.
In order to act as a duty solicitor a solicitor must be a member of the Law Society's Criminal Litigation Accreditation Scheme[1]. In order to become a member of the scheme a solicitor must demonstrate a particular level of competence set by the Law Society. In order to demonstrate their competence a solicitor must pass a number of assessments.
The duty solicitor scheme in Scotland is run by the Scottish Legal Aid Board.
[edit] Other countries
Duty solicitor schemes, based on the British system, are also run in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In Canada, duty solicitors are called duty counsel and perform functions that would, in the British system, be performed by barristers and by solicitors.
The United States and Brazil employ a public defender system with nearly identical duties, representing an indigent client from custodial questioning, to charge, trial, sentence, and appeal.
