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| Legal aid providers offer legal advice to the people of Can Tho city__Photo: VNA |
Legal consultants providing legal aid to SMEs (SME legal consultants) belong to the broader consultant network for SMEs as mentioned in the 2017 Law on Support for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Government Decree 55 of 2019 on legal aid for SMEs.
According to the Department of Law Dissemination and Education and Legal Aid of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), out of approximately 900,000 enterprises nationwide, 97 percent are small- and medium-sized ones. Consequently, the SMEs’ demand for general support, and their demand for legal aid in particular, is on the rise, with a special need for legal counseling provided by legal consultants engaged in providing legal aid services.
The 5-year review report on the implementation of Decree 55 shows that, to facilitate the provision of legal counseling for SMEs, the MOJ has established a network of legal consultants who work in 127 law-practicing organizations and legal counseling centers or practice as 186 lawyers or individual legal consultants that have been registered and licensed nationwide. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) has also listed two legal consultants for its sector.
However, to date there are no specific legal provisions on conditions and criteria for managing and upholding the responsibility of legal consultants, as well as procedures for removing unqualified ones from the network. As a result, concerned ministries and ministerial-level agencies remain confused in determining the status and scope of activities of the network’s members.
Ministries other than MOJ and MOIT and most ministerial-level agencies have not yet publicly announced their own legal consultants in sectors and fields under their management, and in practice no legal aid activities have been carried out by these legal consultants.
Moreover, the level of financial support for payment of legal aid expenses specified in Decree 55 is very moderate as compared to actual charges for hiring lawyers to provide legal services to SMEs.
For the above reasons, in order to build a pool of legal consultants to provide legal aid to SMEs, the MOJ proposes a number of solutions. It recommends adding new consistent provisions on legal consultants, emphasizing their social role and responsibility, in the revised Law on Support for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, the Law on Lawyers, and the Decree on legal aid for enterprises. It also proposes decentralizing powers to provincial-level People’s Committees to attract and allocate resources for building, managing and using legal consultants in their localities. In addition, the MOJ suggests supplementing regulations on the conditions and criteria for managing legal consultants, and procedures for termination of their status, thereby enhancing their responsibility in providing legal aid.
The MOJ further proposes adding provisions on how to effectively operate the network of legal consultants, focusing not only on in-person legal counseling but also on the consistent provision of legal counseling via hotlines. It emphasizes the need to review, consolidate and strengthen the network of legal consultants and related human resources engaged in providing legal aid to SMEs. At the same time, it highlights the importance of improving the quality and efficiency of the activities of legal consultants and of officials and civil servants of ministries, sectors and localities who are responsible for providing legal aid to SMEs, ensuring that they become more specialized and professional and that they are willing to participate in refresher courses to improve their legal knowledge, skills and methods of legal aid provision. Finally, the MOJ calls for studying and implementing policies and solutions to support organizations and individuals in participating in the network of legal services and legal consultants that provide legal aid to SMEs in a reasonable manner.- (VLLF)
