Volunteer lawyers assist in poor regions

?

Yue Xuanyi, director-general of the China Legal Aid Foundation, makes a speech in Beijing in this July 11, 2011 file photo. [Photo/www.claf.com.cn]

BEIJING - Volunteer lawyers and law students are offering legal assistance in China's poor regions and have helped local governments to resolve nearly 4,000 cases of group disputes in three years.

Their efforts are part of the "one-plus-one" China Legal Assistance Volunteering Action Campaign held since 2009, according to a conference on the campaign on Sunday.

The campaign is intended to extend the network of legal assistance to the entire country. So far, it has covered 19 provincial regions including Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Ningxia and Gansu.

Over the past three years, nearly 800 lawyers and university students visited about 300 counties lacking legal resources in underprivileged areas and volunteered their services for nearly 1 million locals, said Yue Xuanyi, director-general of the China Legal Aid Foundation, the campaign's organizer.

Volunteers handled more than 23,000 legal assistance cases, held more than 2,000 legal lectures and provided nearly 10 million consultations, which won praises from the locals and greatly contributed to the promotion of legal services in West China, Yue said.

More than 128 carefully-selected lawyers will take part in the 2012 campaign, he said.

The number of legal assistance cases has reached 2.65 million over the past five years, with an annual increase of 23.5 percent, providing legal consultations for 20.78 million people, up 12.8 percent annually, official statistics show.