The New-Brunswick Aboriginal Duty Counsel Project

5. ABORIGINAL DUTY COUNSEL: FIRST YEAR DATA

The project began taking clients in December 1998. During the implementation phase of the project, up until December 1999, the project duty counsel lawyer represented 146 Native clients. This is a much larger number than the numbers of duty counsel contacts identified as Aboriginal in the pre-project data for the two years prior to the project. The name matching process identified 194 Aboriginal people in 1996-97 and 161 for the first nine months of 1997-98. It was noted above that the Aboriginal duty counsel lawyer provided service only three days a week. The total of 146 clients serviced by the Aboriginal duty counsel project appears reasonable in comparison with the other numbers.