Samuel Kallon 
Part 1:
The Legal aid Board will be ten in May 2025. As someone who has been part of this journey even before joining the Board in 2016, I am going to share with you how the Board has evolved from a humble beginning in a small office in the Guma Building on Lamina Sankoh Street in Freetown into the largest legal aid provider by the end of 2016. This part will cover the activities of the Board from May to December 2015.
There was no organized legal aid scheme in the country before and during the eleven year conflict. Human rights and civil society organizations provided some form of legal aid as a component of their work in the form of court, police station and prison monitoring to provide advice and legal assistance to suspects, accused persons or inmates as the case may be. They also provided human rights education as part of efforts at empowering people to assert their rights while accessing justice at formal and Traditional Justice Mechanism (commonly called Informal) level. A handful of lawyers (Osho Williams of blessed memory comes to mind) provided pro bono service to indigent accused persons.
Legal aid organizations started to emerge following the end of the war in January 2002. These include Lawyer’s Center for Legal Assistance (LAWCLA) which was founded by a human rights lawyer, Melron Nicol-Wilson, TIMAP for Justice, ADVOCAID and Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality, Rights and Social Justice (LAWYERS). TIMAP for Justice program was based on the Paralegal model. The organization trained hundreds of Paralegals around the country. Some were among the first crop of Paralegals recruited by the Legal aid Board between 2015 and 2017.
With funding from the Department for International Development (DFID), The Pilot National Legal Aid programme was set up in 2009 under the Justice Sector Development Programme (JSDP). The pilot programme set out the roadmap for institutionalizing the Legal Aid scheme which was actualized following the passage of the Legal Aid Act on the 10th May 2012.
The Legal aid Board is the first legal aid scheme established by Government. The Board opened the first office in the Guma Building on Lamina Sankoh Street in Freetown. The scheme was launched by former President Ernest Koroma on 19 December 2015 at the Miata Conference Centre.
Ms. Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanclies is the first Executive Director of the Board. She joined the Board from the U.N backed tribunal, Special Court for Sierra Leone where she rose to Principal Defender in 2009, a position she held until the closure of the Court in December 2013. She was the only Sierra Leonean to have held that position.
Justice Ansumana Ivan Sesay of blessed memory was among the first crop of lawyers to join the Board as Legal Aid Manager. He brought a wealth of experience from private practice where he earned a reputation for being a good defence lawyer which earned him the name Ivan for the accused.
The biggest challenge the Board had to contend with at inception relate to managing expectation on the part of indigent or poor persons who qualify for the scheme and therefore deserves to be given a lawyer when they are in conflict with the law. Also, pressure was coming from politicians for the Board to open offices upcountry.
This was on full display at the first workshop for parliamentarians to introduce the scheme and the Legal Aid Act 2012 on the 8th July 2015. They wanted to know why the Board has not established offices outside Freetown and by extension in their constituencies. Even though the expansion of the scheme had cost implications, the parliamentarians were silent on the part they could play to ensure funds are made provided by the by the government to realize this dream.
Lawyers too had their concerns. There was a feeling the scheme will put their job under threat. An executive member of the Sierra Leone Bar Association (SLBA), Julian Cole had publicly questioned the effectiveness with which the ‘Means Test’ for qualification for legal aid was applied at an event organized by the Board. He wanted assurances from the Board that their clients will fall within the ‘Mean Test’ bracket. He warned that failure to scrupulously apply the ‘Means Test’ will affect the livelihood of private legal practitioners. The Executive Director, Ms. Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanciles seized the opportunity to address this concern during a presentation on the work of the Board at the Annual General Meeting of SLBA in Freetown.
The Inadequacy of resources meant the Board could not cater for all those who qualify for the scheme in the Western Area, talk less of establishing offices outside Freetown in 2015. Since the Board had only five legal aid counsels at inception, it had no alternative but to focus on decongesting the Pademba Road Correctional Center which had a prison population of between 1,500 and 1,800 even though it has a capacity of 324. The facility had hundreds of remand inmates who were not on trial because they had no indictment. Some had spent over a decade without trial. What’s more, some had spent more time on remand than the maximum jail term for the crime they were alleged to have committed. The decision to prioritize remand intimates over other category of indigent persons for legal aid was part of the strategy to target the group whose freedom of movement had been curtailed. Furthermore, they were the most vulnerable group base on the overcrowding in the prisons and its attendant health risk.
Moreover, the Board invested time and resources on forging partnerships particularly with justice sector institutions, training of staff, lawyers and partners and organizing workshops on finalization of a draft two-year Strategic Plan and a draft Legal Aid Guide. The Guide sets out the processes and procedures for accessing legal aid. These include application for legal aid, criteria for qualification for legal aid based on the ‘Means Test’, forms for accessing services and documentation of indigent persons.
The Board forged partnership agreements with the following less than two months after its establishment: the Sierra Leone Police, the Sierra Leone Correction Service and the Sierra Leone Bar Association. The partnership agreement with the Sierra Leone Bar Association is meant to have lawyers on a roster who will provide legal representation for a token fee and related issues.
To build the capacity of lawyers, the Board organized a one-day training workshop on 24 September 2015 for twenty-four Sierra Leonean lawyers that would be assigned indigents clients by the Legal Aid Board. This was followed by the distribution of 50 files at a ceremony at Santano House on Howe Street in Freetown. The current Legal Aid Manager, Ms. Cecilia Tucker was among lawyers who benefitted from the training and was consequently given two files. She was the first lawyer to conclude her cases in court. She was subsequent recruited by the Board. She rose to the position of Legal Aid Manager following the departure of Ansumana Ivan Sesay of blessed memory for the bench i August 2017.
The Committee with the Sierra Leone Police comprising senior officers met with the Board once a month to look at challenges around rights of suspects and legal assistance to same by the Board, while the Committee with the Sierra Leone Correctional Service looked at the huge prison population and the legal aid needs of inmates especially those on remand.
The Board had partnership agreements with several organizations including the Council of Tribal Heads in the Western Area, the Sierra Leone Labour Congress and the General Workers and Motor Drivers Union. The partnership with the Council of tribal heads is dedicated to addressing concerns from the public regarding excessive fines, illegal arrest and detention and handling of matters outside their jurisdiction. The one with the Labour Congress is aimed at discussing issues relating to the rights of workers.
The partnership with the Drivers union caters for legal assistance to union members who commit traffic offences while the Union on their part provide free transportation for legal aid clients who wish to return upcountry or Guinea upon their release by the court. Prior to this partnership the Board would have to provide fare to clients released by the court to return home upcountry or risk their being stranded in the office.
WRITTEN BY JOSEPH DUMBUYA
