The development of new standards for legal aid evaluation will be transparent to the greatest extent possible

On September 7 a meeting of the working group for drafting the quality standards for the provision of secondary legal aid in civil and administrative cases took place. The meeting was attended by the Chairman of the Committee on Legal Aid Serhii Vylkov and the Committee Deputy Chair Hanna Zosymenko, the HQDCB Chairman Oleksandr Drozdov, Acting Director of the Coordination Center Oleksii Boniuk, Head of the Department for Legal Aid Quality Control Viktoriia Mitko, and the Director of the Regional Center for the Provision of Secondary Legal Aid in Kyiv City Oksana Vasyliaka.

At the end of July the Coordination Center sent the aforementioned draft standards to the UNBA for approval; upon that these standards will be further elaborated with the participation of advocates, academics, representatives of public organizations and the officials of the Coordination Center itself. According to the Head of Committee on Legal Aid Serhii Vylkov, the document should be approved at the next meeting of the Bar Council of Ukraine, so the approximate deadline for its preparation is September 20.

“Not to postpone the resolution of such an urgent issue as the proper evaluation of legal aid, the working group should work around the clock. In particular, we are talking about the work of the commissions for evaluation of quality, completeness and timeliness of legal aid provision by the advocates that, according to the law, are to be established at the regional bar councils”, — said Serhii Vylkov. According to him, the new standards are intended, first of all, to help those advocates providing legal aid to identify approaches for evaluation of the fulfillment of orders, and to be able to present their reasonable position regarding dishonest persons that are eligible for legal aid at the expense of the state.

The HQDCB Chairman Oleksandr Drozdov emphasized that the work on standards should take place in a transparent, open and professional discussion format. Therefore, in addition to the working group meetings, he proposed to hold a round-table to discuss the draft document.