| dc.description.abstract | Nobody (except for the privileged few) can afford legal services
in Namibia. In the light of this dawning awareness, how should
the government and other stakeholders design the legal
profession so that the greatest number of Namibians can access
legal services and, ultimately, justice while preserving the
profession's financial viability? The predominantly economic
nature of this question means that its solutions lie less in the field
of law than in the field of economics. Thus, this article adopts a
methodology that reflects that insight.
As a primary purpose, this article works towards solving the high
cost of legal services in Namibia. It utilises a literature-review
methodology that searches the scholarship on the legal
profession for practical, down-to-earth solutions put forward in
other countries to take the edge off the prohibitive cost of legal
services. The article mainly finds that, if structured as a
compulsory salary deduction, legal insurance promises the
greatest positive impact on costs. And it concludes that the
optimal solutions should consist of measures aimed at
heightening competition in the legal profession and measures
that broaden cost-sharing in providing legal assistance to the
public. The article argues that competition can be effectively
increased by lubricating the flow of information about prices and
services, and by having more public entities bear the burden of
expanding the system of legal assistance. | en_US |
