Thanks for sharing this @danielsesay. Really important topic. I think it makes sense to do some form of a āterms of engagementā, similar to the client care letter you posted, with all our clients, whether in a case supporting a single family to get identity documents or an effort to support an entire community to secure tenure over their land.
Client feedback mechanisms can also be a useful way of strengthening accountability- see a related thread initiated by @lauragoodwin.
Another option is some sort of community oversight body. Hereās an article about community oversight boards by Timap for Justice co-founder Simeon Koroma.
Hereās an excerpt on this topic from the comparative chapter of our forthcoming book, which looks at paralegal efforts across 6 countries. ( @tobiaseigen, is there a place on discourse where itād make sense to share the entire comparative chapter in draft form? Itās not yet a public document).
To whom are paralegals accountable
Paralegals regularly make subjective judgments about justice in the course of their work. They choose which cases to take on and, for intra-community cases, they often choose sides among people whom the paralegals would regard equally as constituents.
How do we know those choices will be judicious, and that the communityās trust will not be abused? In many places there is a class of people who offer themselves as legal intermediariesāin the Philippines they are called abogadillos, literally āsmall lawyers,ā in Indonesia makelar kasus, in Sierra Leone blackman lawya. These intermediaries charge fees for their services and are often exploitative. A paralegal from Quezon Province in the Philippines told of an abogadillo charging five thousand pesos (around 120 USD) to secure an order from the Department of Agrarian Reform that was officially available for free.
There is a riskāthough we encountered no specific examples in our six studiesāthat paralegals similarly use their knowledge to exploit others. State regulation can mitigate that riskāwe will discuss that possibility in the section on institutional determinants below. Organizations themselves also have a role.
This begins by selecting community paralegals who are aligned with an organizationās values and mission. Most programs studied here search for people who have the respect of fellow community members and who have demonstrated a commitment to public service. Once paralegals begin, vertical supervision and support from senior paralegals or lawyers is crucial, as we have discussed above. That supervision is intended in part to ensure that paralegals are abiding by the principles of justice and human rights on which paralegal efforts are based.
Equally important is accountability of paralegals to the people they serve. Dugard and Drage found āembeddedness in communities,ā the fact that paralegals live among their clients and can therefore take a holistic approach to their problems, to be one of the most positive features of South African community advice offices. This was a common observation across all six studies and indeed is one of the key arguments in favor of a paralegal approach. But as the phenomenon of abogadillos and their counterparts suggests, embeddedness does not guarantee virtue.
Many organizations seek to establish formal structures to ensure accountability. The Social Change Assistance Trust in South Africa requires advice offices it supports to be governed by management committees that include community representatives. The committees in turn must regularly hold open community meetings to review performance. In Indonesia and the Philippines, many paralegals are a part of membership organizations like farmersā associations and trade unions, and are therefore answerable to their fellow members. In Sierra Leone, Timap for Justice has community oversight boards in every chiefdom; the boards are charged with ensuring that the paralegals are serving the constituent community effectively. We do not have hard data on the impact of these structures, but our impression is that some mechanism for ensuring local accountability is crucial for paralegalsā legitimacy.
Discussions here are public