Dear Ministry of Justice,

Please provide the following information:

1. How many criminal legal aid providers presently have contracts with Legal Aid and take more than two cases per year (a year being 1 July to 30 June) for each of the years from 2017-2022 per court cluster as defined by legal aid; and
2. Of those:
a) How many have a highest approval level of PAL 1;
b) How many have a highest approval level of PAL 2;
c) How many have a highest approval level of PAL 3;
d) How many have a highest approval level of PAL 4;
(Please provide this information for each court cluster)
3. How many legal aid providers presently have a duty lawyer rating (whether or not they are on a current duty lawyer roster); and
4. How many providers are currently on a duty lawyer roster as of today's date for the country as a whole; and
5. How many providers are on each individual roster as of today's date (please give court name and number of duty lawyers on that court's roster).

Yours faithfully,

I Brown

Dear May, Annie,

Many thanks for the reply. I do note that the response to question 5 appears to be incomplete. Table 1 of Appendix B only gives the number of PDS lawyers rostered for PDS courts. My question asked for "How many providers are on each individual roster", which means that for a PDS supervised court, the count should include both PDS and non-PDS duty lawyers on that court roster.

I am also curious how the numbers at Table 2 of Appendix B are arrived at. I have compared the answers with duty lawyer rosters as displayed on the MOJ website. Just working alphabetically and taking the first few, I note that, by way of example:

Ashburton is said to have eight duty lawyers on the roster but the roster that is shown for that court online has only three.
Blenheim is said to seven duty lawyers but the roster only has six.
Dannevirke is said to have three duty lawyers but the roster for that court has four.
Dargaville is said to have seven duty lawyers but the roster for that court only has five.
Gore is said to have seven duty lawyers but the roster only has five.
Westport is said to have four duty lawyers but the roster only has two.
Masterton is said to have ten duty lawyers but the roster only has six.

Can I please have these to issues clarified?

Thank you,

I Brown

Dear May, Annie,

Thank you very much for following that up.

The duty lawyer question may just be that PDS lawyers don't need to have been approved as duty lawyers to act as duty lawyers at court. I say this because for courts where the PDS has a presence, the total number of PDS lawyers given is 334, but the reply earlier says that just 125 PDS lawyers have approval as duty lawyers. Unless, as noted for private duty lawyers, some PDS lawyers in fact cover more than one court as duty lawyers?

Yours sincerely,

I Brown

Dear May, Annie,

I am just wondering if I am going to get a reply to my question?

Yours sincerely,

I Brown