Allow non-lawyers to provide some legal services: government task force
Providing legal information should be "deregulated so that anyone is able provide it," the final report of a government task force recommends.
In the report, the task force — a joint effort between the Ministry of Justice and the Law Society of Saskatchewan — says there needs to be greater clarity between what sorts of legal advice or actions require a law licence and what constitutes legal information.
Legal information can be something as simple as clarification about processes and system navigation.
Other notable recommendations from the report include allowing the society to grant limited licences to people to practise law on a case-by-case basis, and reducing the restrictions that paralegals and legal assistants face.
Some of the report's nine recommendations would involve amendments to the the Legal Profession Act 1990, which governs the legal profession in Saskatchewan.
This report comes just over a month after major cuts were announced in the Saskatoon legal aid office, which provides services to people with low income. Three vacant lawyer positions will be going unfilled and six support staff positions are being eliminated. The cuts come into effect in September.
According to the report, one of the main reasons the task force was asked to undertake this work was because money is a huge barrier to some people attempting to access legal services.
