The overall mandate of the Plan was, and continues to be, to provide necessary legal services to low-income people. The Legal Aid Plan pays for the services of a lawyer when individuals with legal problems cannot afford to hire a lawyer. Traditionally, this has been done on the basis of a Legal Aid certificate.
Individuals apply for legal aid at a local legal aid office.
If they are financially eligible and if the services they require are available, they are issued a certificate which enables them to hire a lawyer participating in the program. Lawyers performing legal aid services are paid by the Legal Aid Fund at an agreed hourly rate. While the certificate program has always helped many financially needy people, soon after it began, various community groups, the Law Society and the government recognized that it left some serious gaps in the legal services needed by low-income people. For instance, the program failed to address legal services in significant areas of poverty law including unemployment insurance and social assistance and the need for providing legal education in areas of poverty law to the community. In response to the gaps in services provided by the certificate program, neighbourhood legal aid clinics came into being.