Who is a Paralegal?

Defined broadly, a paralegal is a person who, without passing through the process of legal education offered by the formal education system, renders legal and law related services to members of his/her community. In the Ethiopian context, court clerks, social court judges, family arbitrators, peace-making shimagiles, unlicensed law-practitioners - who usually work in small stalls around courts and other public offices are all typical examples of a paralegal defined in this way. Often these people acquire their legal knowledge and skills from court attendance, personal experience, working with judges and lawyers, wisdom accumulated through ages, etc. For the most part, despite pretensions of being "initiated" to be a lawyer, they speak prose without knowing it as prose. Certainly, such people do play a very useful role in addressing a serious need in our society the critical shortage of properly trained lawyers. That shortage though a disease afflicting the legal system is neither the only nor the major problem the legal system has. At the root of the inadequacy of the legal system to address the needs of our society is the absence of informed popular participation in the shaping, and functioning of the legal system. The process of seeking cures for that malady necessitates a more sharp definition of who a paralegal is. In this sharper understanding, a paralegal is a member of a community who is based in that community and works with that community to seek solution to the problems of the community using the law and the legal system as a tool for bringing about informed participation and change. The aspiration of such paralegals is not to be or to pretend to be lawyers, but to serve as a catalyst of empowerment for their communities.

In a country like Ethiopia - where the judicial system is not extensive enough to reach the breadth and width of the country, where there is shortage of adequately trained judicial personnel, where the existing courts are over congested, where the rights culture is literally non-existent, and where litigation is a very expensive commodity poor people cannot afford - paralegals play quite a significant role in the dispensation of justice to the community. That role can be viewed in a more broad sense than that implied by justice as disposed in the judicial process. Paralegals can be effective in bringing about a broader social justice as development agents-initiating dialogue in their respective communities as to what the root causes of poverty and under development are, providing the law and human rights to challenge iniquitous practices and institutions and mobilising popular participation in development efforts. It is in recognition of the important role paralegals can play in society and with the objective of strengthening and institutionalising paralegalism that APAP decided to be engaged in a Paralegal Training Programme.

In the past three years of its existence, APAP has experimented its intention of paralegal training in two slum areas in Addis Ababa, namely, the Repi and the Tekle Haimanot communities. To give the reader a glimpse of what has actually been done on the ground, the Repi experiment is selected and made the subject of one of the articles in this newsletter. Based on the lessons learnt from these experiments and from the experience of South-East Asian and Southern Africa Countries, which have a relatively long-standing tradition of paralegal training, APAP has now developed its own programme of paralegal training in such a way as to accommodate the needs and interests of its target audience. In the implementation of this programme, APAP will follow a two thronged approach, namely, that of:

a) Strangthening, through training and back-up support, existing community structures that are already in place rendering a paralegal like service; and

b) Creating a new breed of paralegals who will be ready to assume more and more roles and responsibilities than that of the traditional ones.

Like its other programmes, APAP's target community for paralegal training will be the poor and the marginalized with particular focus on women and children. The selection of specific targets from among the wide spectrum of possible groups that can be defined in this way is made on the basis of two approaches. The first is that of the "theme" approach. In this a specific problem area which affects the targets across the board is selected and training conducted in relation the said theme. The prominent example of this so far is that of prostitution in general and child prostitution in particular. The second approach is that of "area" in which specific areas where the problem of poverty and other social evils are particularly acute are targeted. The Tekle Haimanot and Repi areas within Addis Ababa have so far been identified as such areas.

Trainees of the required caliber will be selected for the paralegal training programme on the basis of a criteria which to a large extent is jointly developed by the target community and APAP. Without disregarding the interest and preference of the target community, APAP generally looks for persons who live with and share the day-to-day problems of the community and who possess and demonstrate the following qualities: leadership; understanding and communication skills; willingness to serve the community with devotion; and adequate learning competence to fully benefit from the training and to put it to practical use. These are just general guidelines elaborated and improved with the participation and in accordance with the specific needs of the target community in each training in the past.

It is again with the participation of the target community that the course content of the paralegal training will be developed. Prior to the commencement of the training, surveys are undertaken to assess and identify legal problems that frequently recur in the target community, institutions and other community resources that can be made use of to address those problems, the living conditions and the behavioural patterns of community members, the time and duration that would be most appropriate to conduct the training, and other cultural consideration that need to be taken into account. By the end of the survey APAP will have the following identified by the community:

1) Substantive laws including portions of human rights that are relevant to the day-to-day lives of the community; and

2) Procedural laws that accord safe-guards and provide guidelines on how to use different institutions and formats when seeking redress from such institutions for violations of substantive rights; and

3) Areas of skills training.

The training will essentially be designed to address these needs. It also aims at equipping the trainees in skills related to community organisation and other practical skills in many related subject areas such as fact finding, evidence gathering, client handling and interviewing, document filing, report writing, petty-cash and office administration which are required of a paralegal.

At present APAP is preparing a comprehensive paralegal training manual guide. The manual is prepared in light of the experiences accumulated so far and by consulting experiences of other organisations particularly those found in South Africa. The fundamental objective of the manual is to facilitate the training of persons as paralegals and also to serve as a reference material for paralegals when they are involved in the actual task of availing services to their community. The subjects to be covered in the manual include, among others, human rights law, law of social security, skills of preparing pleadings for courts and administrative bodies, alternative dispute settlement mechanisms, skills of community organisation and mobilisation, and community project development.

After completing the training the paralegals will be expected to go back to their respective communities and serve as:

a) First legal Aid Assistants:- such assistance ranges from giving oral advice to preparing pleadings and applications or accompanying the client to courts or any other public offices. But they will be advised to give legal assistance only in those areas where they have adequate knowledge, otherwise they will refer the client to APAP.

b) Promoters of Human rights:- based on the training they receive and educational materials to be supplied by APAP, they will conduct human rights education session to members of their community as and when those rights are relevant to address problems encountered by the community at the local level.

c) Community Organisers:- APAP's target communities being the poor, it goes without saying that they will have so many pressing economic and social needs which they cannot overcome single handed. Under such circumstances the paralegals would be expected to play the role of a community organiser thereby initiating and encouraging members of their community to mobilise and pool together locally available resources, mostly human power and employ it for generating services that are essential to the community.

d) Catalytic promoters of development activities:- Paralegals can also serve as development agents of their community thereby helping the latter to critically understand their living conditions, articulate their needs and demand the appropriate agencies to address their concern in whatever developmental activities they are undertaking.

The year 1996 is expected top be one in which APAP engages in an extensive paralegal training covering not only Addis Ababa but also four of the major Regions. On the basis of a needs assessment to be conducted at the beginning of the year, six residential training are planned to be conducted for community members selected from these Regions which is to be supplemented by the provision of on the spot back p and training services throughout the year. It is hoped that this is just the beginning of teaching people how to fish as distinguished from giving them the fish.