Daily Tribune
The three-day 2022 National Legal Aid Summit concluded the other day at L'Fisher Hotel in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental with participants tackling the development of a roadmap for making legal assistance reach underserved areas.
The roadmap is in line with the Supreme Court's similar goal.
The summit with the theme "Reimagining the Art of Legal Empowerment: National Summit on Access to Justice through Cultivating Approaches on Legal Aid" was organized in partnership with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, the Philippine Association of Law Schools, the Free Legal Assistance Group and the Alternative Law Groups.
Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen, chairperson of the SC Committee on Access to Justice/Underserved Areas, delivered the keynote address for the event.
Leonen urged summit participants to consider 10 points in the area of legal aid. He suggested that traditional legal aid be made mandatory only for law firms with more than 20 lawyers and with a threshold income.
The SAJ also reminded that legal aid or access to justice should never be under the umbrella of only one organization.
Leonen said that whistleblowers in corruption cases should be protected; clinical legal education must provide more space or accommodate those who would like to do actual critical research and policy advocacy; law curriculum should be seriously reviewed; law schools should add competencies in skills to practice and advocate as well as critical legal thinking skills that will allow more lawyers to make the law more legible in the context of society.
