7.2 Legal Aid

The constitutional and statutory frame: the right of the indigent to free legal counsel (the constitutional guarantee of legal aid in criminal justice — the fair-trial's component); the Legal Aid Act 2050 B.S. framework (the legal-aid committees at the central and district levels; the eligibility criteria — the indigence test; the services: advice, representation, the court fees' waiver route); the providers' duty (the assigned counsel, the quality not merely the formality — the "defence lawyer in name only" critique); the NBA's and the law campuses' legal-aid clinics (the students' supervised practice — the clinical legal education). The philosophy: justice inaccessible to the poor is justice denied to the system — the aid as the Constitution's promise operationalised.