Legal aid ideas

In Philippine Senate Bill No. 2301 Sen. Manuel Lapid has proposed to give tax credits to private lawyers who provide services to the poor.

My proposal, in addition to Sen. Lapid's tax credits concept, is to compel lawyers to perform mandatory pro bono services, say, for a certain number of hours per annum, which shall be credited as MCLE units of the participating lawyers.

I think lawyers associations in the Philippines should manifest their respective positions on the matter to help Congress and the Supreme Court come up with a comprehensive legal aid law and updated MCLE rules.

Quoted in full below is the news update on Sen. Lapid's bill:

Tax breaks eyed for private lawyers who aid poor By Veronica Uy INQUIRER.net First Posted 14:06:00 06/02/2008 MANILA, Philippines -- After a long time, Senator Manuel "Lito" Lapid on Monday showed up for a hearing on a bill that seeks to give tax credits to private lawyers who provide services to the poor. After the hearing, Lapid said he was inspired to file Senate Bill 2301 by the story of a man who spent five years in jail for throwing a stone at a streetlamp because he had no lawyer to defend him. The bill proposes tax credits of between P10,000 and P30,000 for all legal services, and P50,000 for services involving litigation. Senator Francis Escudero, chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, said he wants to put a cap on the tax credits and expand the meaning of pauper client to include those who earn more than the minimum and living wages. "Even those who are earning so much more than the minimum cannot afford legal services," he said. Justice Assistant Secretary Teresita Domingo, who has been heading the justice department's action center for the past 20 years, said there is a severe lack of prosecutors as the ratio of courts to prosecutors is 2-3 courts to one prosecutor. She said the budget for the ideal number of 3,000 prosecutors getting P400,000 a year would be P1.2 billion. For her part, Public Attorney's Office chief Persida Acosta-Rueda, said her office needs an additional budget of some P400 million for 1,000 government defense lawyers getting paid P30,000 a month. Escudero said this means that the government would be saving a total of P1.6 billion if Lapid’s bill is passed into law. Lapid said there is a counterpart measure in the House of Representatives.