EKSISTENSI UNDANG-UNDANG BANTUAN HUKUM BAGI PARALEGAL

The presence of paralegals in Indonesia can actually be traced back to a time long ago before the independent of Indonesia. Before the independence, paralegals were better known as “pokrol bamboo’. Today, the presence of paralegal has developed in the community, and has contributed to the provision of legal aid especially for the have-nots and those who are disadvantage people. The availability of the law No. 16/2011 on the Legal Aid that acknowledged the existence of paralegals was regarded as fresh breeze by the paralegals. As up to that time, in doing their profession, the paralegals had been often ignored, or even regarded as the source of provocations by the law enforcement authority, in this case by the police. For a long time, the police and the community usually had a point of view that those eligible for the provision of legal aid were only lawyers. That caused that the paralegals were ignored and looked down upon. The recognition of paralegals in the Law of legal aid itself does not automatically solve the problem encountered by the paralegals. For in that law of legal aid, there is not any statement or any explanation as to what paralegals are, what the domain of paralegals is, and how the legal protection for the paralegals is carried out