Public defender

A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Hungary and Singapore, and some states of Australia. Brazil is the only country in which an office of government-paid lawyers with the specific purpose of providing full legal assistance and representation to the needy free of charge is established in the constitution. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, requires the US government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases. Public defenders in the United States are lawyers employed by or under contract with county, state or federal governments. In civil law countries, following the model from the French Napoleonic Code of criminal procedure, the courts typically appoint private attorneys at the expense of the state. The Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales both have dedicated Public Defenders chambers. These chambers retain barristers who are employed by the state government to represent legally-aided clients who are charged with serious indictable offences. In New South Wales, Public Defenders only appear in criminal matters, both at trial and appellate level, while in Victoria, Public Defenders also undertake some family law and civil work. The New South Wales Senior Public Defender is Belinda Rigg, Senior Counsel, who was the first female public defender in NSW upon her appointment in 2019. In Victoria, the Chief Public Defender is Tim Marsh. In Queensland, the Legal Aid Office (Queensland) was merged with the Public Defender's Office in 1991, in an expanded service providing clients to access family, civil and all criminal law services. The Constitution of Brazil uniquely provides for a public defenders' office (Defensoria Pública) at both state and federal levels. Public defense is a right to poor people, who must declare, formally, that they cannot afford regular legal aid, to benefit from public defenders' services.