How Did Legal Aid Come to Be? A Cross Comparison of Canada's and Ukraine's Legal Aid Implementation

Abstract

Legal aid is known around the world as a system to help the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable population gain access to justice. Most countries implemented their own unique legal aid systems around the mid-20 th century. Legal aid has been around longer, as early as the late 19 th century but it was known as charitable work, where lawyers would volunteer their time. During the 1960's and 1970's most countries started to pass legislation implementing the development of legal aid. This paper explores a western country, Canada, to a European country, Ukraine, on their implementations of legal aid. It gives an in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences in their implementation process and development of their own legal aid systems.