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What is the nature of the Legal Aid provided by the Legal Aid Districts?
Legal Aid may be granted in two ways:
1. Advice and Guidance: after a meticulous examination of the circumstances the District Office may decide that you are capable of acting for yourself and that there is no need to appoint a Lawyer to represent you. In such a case you will be sent a standard form letter explaining what you have to do and how to proceed.
2. Legal Representation: when the Head of the District Office or his representative decides to grant Legal Aid which necessitates representation by a Lawyer, a Lawyer will be assigned to you, who will generally, as a general rule, be a Lawyer working in a private Law Office, for representation in the relevant legal proceedings. The Lawyer's professional fees will be paid by the State Treasury.
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Please note that the financing of professional fees does not include expenses that are over and above the Lawyer's professional fees in the proceeding itself, such as: payment for an expert opinion or an advertisement in a newspaper. You may still be required to pay such expenses in full. |
Do I have to pay the Lawyer who has been assigned by the Legal Aid Department?
When the Head of the District Office or his representative decides to grant Legal Aid that necessitates representation by an Lawyer, a Lawyer will be assigned to you, who generally will be an Attorney working out of a private Law Office, for representation in the relevant legal proceedings. The Lawyer's professional fees will be paid by the State Treasury and not by you.
However, under the provisions of the Legal Aid Regulations, 5733-1973, in an application for the provision of a legal service you must pay the Legal Aid District Office a participation fee, which consists of two parts:
1. A preliminary payment of 33 Shekels which is a condition for processing the application.
2. If a decision is made to grant Legal Aid a supplementary payment must be made (up to a total of NIS 132).
It should be emphasized that the decision to cap a fee for a person for whom the Head of the District Office has decided to grant the application and who is entitled to Legal Aid will be determined according to the level of the income of the applicant for aid.
What happens in urgent cases in which I need Legal Aid immediately?
The Legal Aid District Office all over the Country are ready to provide urgent and immediate Legal Aid in the following circumstances:
1. Family-related violence
2. Issue of Orders Staying Exit from the Country
3. Release from imprisonment because of debts
4. Request of an applicant at or about expiry date for the filing of Court Documents.
5. Issue of Injunction Orders in urgent cases.
In cases of this kind, it is obviously important that Legal Aid should be granted urgently and immediately either by way of providing you with guidance and/or independently and/or by way of Legal Aid urgently, for representation in an appropriate legal forum.
In order to provide the proper legal service that is expressed in terms of accessibility to one of the District Office's Lawyers even when it is not possible to contact the Bureau for an answer such as at times in the afternoons or at weekends, the District Office's panel of Lawyers are organized in a state of readiness so that there are Lawyers available on a duty roster every day to provide a telephone response in urgent cases as detailed above and to deal with them.
In every District Office there is a special standby telephone line. The duty Lawyer is responsible for receiving and listening to messages from applicants left on the special standby telephone answering machine for urgent cases.
The Standby Times
Sundays - Thursdays between 4 pm and Midnight
On Fridays and the eve of holidays and festivals starting from 12 noon until the beginning of the Sabbath/Festival and from the end of the Sabbath and Festival until Midnight.
Our standby lines :
The Northern District - 04-6459442
Haifa District - 04 - 8634089
Tel Aviv Central District - 03-6932639
Jerusalem District (including Ashdod and Eilat) - 02-6211363
Southern District - 08-6404537
My mother is sick and is hospitalized in a closed ward in a mental hospital under a forced hospitalization order. Is it possible to help me in proceedings to obtain a release from forced hospitalization?
Legal Aid represents clients in civil proceedings before Forced Hospitalization Committees when a Forced Hospitalization Order has been issued.
Legal Aid is granted by the Legal Aid District Office throughout the Country under the Treatment of Mental Patients Law (Amendment No.5), 5764-2004, for persons who have been forcibly hospitalized, including their representation before District Psychiatric Committees.
Legal representation by the Legal Aid Bureaus throughout the Country constitutes a fair balance between the deprivation of an individual's freedom in a manner that is in conflict between what has been prescribed in Section 5 of the Basic Law: Human Dignity, that "the liberty of a person shall not be deprived or restricted through imprisonment, detention, extradition or in any other manner", with an individual now being afforded an opportunity of having his voice heard even before he is deprived of his liberty.
In an application for Legal Aid for representation before a Psychiatric Committee, the financial eligibility of the applicant is not examined, nor the prospects for success of his application. In examining the prospects for representation in an appeal against a decision of the Committee (before the District Court) only the prospects for success will be examined. Additionally, by virtue of the circumstances, in such applications the applicant cannot physically come to the relevant Bureau near to his place of residence and sometimes, is not even capable of conducting a telephone interview with one of the District Office's Lawyers. Accordingly in such cases in which a telephone interview cannot take place, Legal Aid is granted to an applicant in which one of the Lawyers from the various District Office who deals with forced hospitalization, meets the applicant in the institution in which he is hospitalized and helps him to complete the Legal Aid application form. It should be emphasized that in order to obtain representation of a lawyer under the Legal Aid scheme, the hospital must provide the patient with special forms immediately upon his hospitalization and complete them and ask the hospital staff to fax them immediately to an office of Legal Aid.
What happens if in the middle of the legal proceedings in which I am being represented by Legal Aid, another legal matter arises (not necessarily in respect of the same matter) and I need Legal Aid?
The Legal Aid Department provides aid in civil matters that are specified in Regulation 5 of the Legal Aid Regulations 5733 - 1973. If there is another matter in which you are entitled to Legal Aid, included in the list of matters specified in Regulation 5, you may certainly contact the Legal Aid District Office with an appropriate application.
Generally speaking, Legal Aid will be granted to a person who meets all the three following conditions:
1. The matter in which Legal Aid is requested is one of the matters in which Legal Aid is granted.
2. The applicant meets the financial eligibility conditions specified in the Law and in the Regulations.
3. There is a reasonable prospect by law, of success in the relevant proceedings.
Will the existence of many expenses, such as - mortgage liabilities, loans etc. change the manner of calculation of financial eligibility for services?
According to the Legal Aid Law 5732 - 1972, legal services including the expenses involved in such proceedings, will be provided in the matters and to the extent prescribed in the Legal Aid Regulations, 5733 - 1973, to persons who are unable to bear such expenses.
The provisions of the Law are unequivocal in relation to financial eligibility. The test is an objective one when under the provisions of the Law (Regulation 2) only income and not expenses are examined.
The financial eligibility test comprises, for an individual or a family consisting of up to three persons, examining if the income exceeds more than 67% of the national average wage (currently NIS 5,896). There is an addition of 6% in respect of each additional person. The test is in reference to gross income.
The income calculation is made, as mentioned, according to "gross income", with the salary being examined in respect of the last three months. As the income is gross income, no attachment, mortgage, debt, expense etc. is deemed to be deductible from the calculated income in respect of the financial eligibility. However, in a case in which there is an attachment of the whole of the applicant's salary, legal aid will be granted temporarily for removal of the attachment, and nothing more.
As "income" takes account of all income, as such is defined in the Income Tax Ordinance, with the exception of child allowances, grants to soldiers or members of their families and special services benefit (Miscellaneous Applications (Jerusalem) 1076/02 Dina Yehuda v. Head of the Legal Aid District Office, 32 (2) 057). Additionally, as "income" there is taken into account, income of all members of the family living together in the same household, unless it is proved that there is complete separation of income and expenditure.
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