Victorian Legal Aid provides advice, self help classes, duty lawyers and legal assistance.
Victorian Legal Aid:
- Gives free legal advice and can take preliminary steps in legal proceedings by making telephone calls and writing letters.
- Holds classes to assist people to represent themselves if charged with traffic offences.
- Provides a telephone information service in English and 11 community languages.
- Provides a public access law library.
- In some situations Victorian Legal Aid can provide legal assistance to run a case.
Legal assistance means that Victorian Legal Aid will provide one of their legal practitioners or pay a private legal practitioner to represent a person.
- Victorian Legal Aid arranges for legal practitioners to attend many Magistrates' Courts and the Children's Court to:
- Give advice to persons charged with criminal offences.
- To represent them in applications for bail or adjournments.
- To make pleas for leniency for the person who is pleading guilty.
- Victorian Legal Aid lawyers make regular visits to remand centres and prisons.
- These legal practitioners are known as duty lawyers.
Eligibility for legal assistance
Victorian Legal Aid applies three tests before you can get legal assistance. These are means and merit tests and whether your case is within its guidelines.
- Victorian Legal Aid limits the amount it will spend on each case. This may be:
- Limiting the amount it will pay your lawyer for each stage of the case or
- Putting a ceiling on the total amount it will spend on your case.
- Legal assistance is not free. Depending on your financial situation you may have to pay a lump sum or monthly amounts to Victorian Legal Aid.
Contact:
Victorian Legal Aid
350 Queen Street
Melbourne
Ph: (03) 9269 0234
For further information visit the Victorian Legal Aid website.