SINGAPORE: Just last month, Singapore’s pro bono movement received a boost with more law students getting involved in Community Legal Clinics, by providing paralegal services to Singaporeans and Permanent Residents in need.
It was a further boost to an ecosystem that barely existed just 30 years ago. But all that would change thanks to a group of passionate lawyers.
When veteran lawyer Harry Elias was appointed president of the Law Society in 1984, he had big plans, like establishing a magazine and pushing for a permanent Court of Appeal.
Instead, a group of lawyers urged him to pay a visit to the courtroom where a conveyor belt of accused people was charged with various alleged crimes.
“So I sat there, I saw ladies being punished – two weeks’ imprisonment, S$2,000 fine. But nobody was speaking for them,” he said.
It was this experience that prompted Mr Elias and some of his peers, which included activist Teo Soh Lung, to initiate the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, or CLAS, in September 1985. The scheme would provide legal aid and representation to those facing criminal charges, but could not afford a lawyer.
“(Before CLAS,) pro bono never existed as such,” said Mr Elias, who was also CLAS’ founding chairman.
According to reports, CLAS was the first initiative to provide official legal aid for non-capital punishment cases. The Government’s Legal Aid Bureau provided representation only for civil cases, while those facing capital punishment were assigned lawyers by the state, if the accused was not represented.
But the group needed seed money, a task that proved to be challenging.
“I approached the ministry. I said, ‘Look, can we do this?’. They said we are already funding the prosecution. How do we fund the opposition? It doesn’t make sense,” Mr Elias recalled.
“What you have to do is to try to collect the funds yourself. And that is really how it was.”
Mr Elias approached business magnate, Ong Beng Seng, for a donation. Within a year, CLAS had S$30,000 to work with.
While the Government could not contribute funds, premises were provided. The final step was pulling in more lawyers to provide their services for free.
“The one thing we were expecting was a lack of volunteers, but my first letter (reaching out to them) got 200 lawyers. I almost fell. I said, ’What is happening? For God’s sake, 200 lawyers?’” Mr Elias recalled with a laugh.
From the get-go, volunteer lawyers were told they would not receive a cent for their work.
“I told them, you’re not entitled to disbursements. Disbursements for taxis, for police reports, please waive that. I don’t have the money to give you. All 200 said fine.”
THE FIRST CASE: SHOPLIFTING A TIN OF MILK POWDER
When it first started, Mr Elias said the team decided they would only take theft cases. More than 30 years later, the first case that CLAS represented is still etched firmly in his mind.
It may have been a ‘simple’ case of theft, but CLAS’ first case reminded the team that providing pro bono services was a necessity, said Mr Elias, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday. (Photo: Monica Kotwani)
It involved a 38-year-old mother of two. She was alleged to have stolen a tin of milk, baby food and an egg roll from a supermarket in 1986.
“This woman came from a background that is poor,” Mr Elias said.
“She needed to buy milk. She’s not going to take and sell the milk in Tekka Market. She’s taking it home, and she’s making milk for the baby.”
When she appeared in court, Mr Elias also realised how lost she seemed.
“She was a small woman (appearing) against the majesty of the court,” Mr Elias said.
“A courtroom with people dressed up in robes, and police officers all over the place. You go there, it intimidates you. It intimidates me and I’m supposed to be a 40-, 50-year-old man. The woman doesn’t know where she’s going. And I wanted was for her to be represented.”
A volunteer lawyer who represented the woman successfully applied to the Attorney-General’s Office for the charges to be dropped.
Barely eight months into the scheme, CLAS was extended to locals and foreigners who qualified based on a means test. And they could now be represented for all criminal cases, except capital offences.
From a small grassroots-led initiative, Mr Elias said CLAS became “the golden crown of lawyers”. But it would take another 20 years before a comprehensive pro-bono movement would truly take root.
A REVIEW OF LEGAL AID AND THE FORMALISATION OF PRO BONO
In 2006, the Law Society’s Legal Aid Review Committee was tasked to assess the provision of legal aid in Singapore.
“The report looked at what was currently available and also examined the profile of needy persons and basically looking to see if lawyers could step up in a more structured way to help these persons through pro bono,” said Chief Executive Officer of the Law Society Pro Bono Services, Lim Tanguy.
Mr Lim said the report made two key recommendations. He said the first was that lawyers should aim for an aspirational target of 25 hours of pro bono work per year, and the second was to set up an office to administer the “bank of hours” when directed to areas of need.
The recommendations led to the establishment of the Pro Bono Services Office (PBSO) under the Law Society in 2007, with Mr Lim appointed as the Director.
For Mr Lim, who had been doing pro bono work for foreign workers at the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) for a number of years, the new post was a natural progression.
“I was happy where I was. I had two wonderful partners but maybe it was an early mid-life crisis and I basically decided to apply for the job,” he said.
“My role was to set up the office and then look for pro bono opportunities and initiate new schemes.”
While CLAS remained a focus of the office, the team was able to provide more structured support to volunteer lawyers, and expand into new areas of pro bono work.
It worked with the North West and South East Community Development Councils (CDC) to run legal clinics in 2007, providing residents living in the heartlands with free legal advice.In 2014, the initiative was expanded into a network for all 5 CDCs to tap on, and last month, the collaboration was renewed for another three years.
Legal clinics in the heartlands provide free legal advice to residents in need, an initiative that has since expanded to all Community Development Centres to tap on. (Photo: Law Society Pro Bono Services)
The office also continued its work with voluntary welfare organisations like HOME and the Migrant Workers’ Centre (MWC).
With the establishment of the office, more law firms have also come on board, said Mr Lim. In 2007, the community legal clinics were running four nights a week, and the office needed to expand the pool of lawyers who could assist.
“The reality is such that even if a lawyer wants to do pro bono work, unless he or she is with a firm that is pro- pro bono, it would be very difficult for them to do so and by getting the managing partners to commit their firm, it becomes about their firm branding, their firm’s reputation and you have firm alignment from top to bottom as well,” Mr Lim said.
It is not surprising then that given Mr Elias’ involvement in pro bono work, his firm, now known as Eversheds Harry Elias Partnership, was the first to sign a memorandum of understanding with PBSO in 2014.
The firm’s managing partner Philip Fong said the MOU meant undertaking 25 CLAS cases a year.
“We assign files to the junior lawyers who are supervised by their seniors,” Mr Fong said.
“We clock in the time they spend on such files and this is also taken into consideration in assessing performance and contribution to the firm.”
With the way the office had expanded, Mr Lim said the PBSO was corporatised in April this year, with the office transferring its operations, programmes and 30 staff to a new entity, the Law Society Pro Bono Services (LSPBS).
A BIGGER CLAS AND A MORE FORWARD-LOOKING PRO BONO SYSTEM
Some 30 years after it was established, CLAS reached another milestone. In 2015, the government announced that it would provide up to $3.5 million in funding to cover operational costs and disbursements to volunteer lawyers.
This meant that the number of accused people it could assist would increase from 400, to about 6,000 people each year.
Mr Lim said LSPBS is also looking out for new areas for expansion, by touching base with the various VWOs. One area it sees potential for more volunteers is in eldercare law. This means helping Singapore’s increasingly ageing population put in place the “right legal instruments” at an earlier stage.
The second, he said, is equipping social workers with adequate legal training when helping vulnerable families and individuals.
“The thing about law is it’s a bit like medical issues,” Mr Lim said. “If you look upstream and take precautions or treatment then, it’s much easier to deal with than downstream.
“With problem gamblers for example, there’s a fear in the family that if they don’t pay up the debt, even to licensed money lenders, something bad will happen or if they are married, the spouse is liable. So (equipping social workers with) simple advice is in informing families by telling them that that’s not how it works.
“You have so many cases where all the children’s and spouse’s savings are gone just because the husband is an addicted gambler. And had they just let them be made bankrupt, it would have stopped and he would not have been allowed to go into casinos and so on.”
Mr Lim said LSPBS started a pilot at the Taman Jurong Family Service Centre in December last year, giving talks to social workers on laws that may be helpful in their line of work.
The way the movement has expanded has highlighted how important it is for people to have access to legal information, and be represented, regardless of their income, say pro bono advocates like Mr Elias and Mr Lim.
Mr Elias, who celebrated his 80th birthday in May, is still active in pro bono work. And no matter how heinous the crime, his feelings about ensuring everyone gets their day in court has not changed. He is currently representing a man who is accused of raping his mother.
“It’s not for us to try them. The whole system is that there is a judge,” Mr Elias said.
“If he thinks you have done wrong, listen (to my defence) and punish (accordingly).”
“So why don’t we take (the case), give them the opportunity for the best possible representation. Sometimes you take it on the basis of acquittal. I don’t get an acquittal, I don’t care, but if I get the judge listening to the mitigating factors, then I have done my job.”
