Legal Aid Alberta

Calgary Legal Aid Refugee Pilot Evaluation

(January 2003 – January 2007)

The aim of the pilot project was to increase the quality and speed of service delivery to refugee claimants and to create administrative and cost efficiencies.  The means to these ends has been the provision of “front-end” legal and other services to refugee claimants through the services of a paralegal and private bar lawyers completing refugee files on legal aid certificates.  The evaluation included qualitative (interviews with lawyers, refugee claimants, Legal Aid staff, and representatives of the Immigration Refugee Board and three immigrant serving agencies) and quantitative (analyses of data base information) components.