“This is to provide the public access to justice,” she said when launching the council’s Legal Aid Day today.

The event, undertaken in collaboration with the judiciary, the Bar Council National Legal Aid Committee and the National Legal Aid Foundation, was officiated by Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat at the Kuala Lumpur court complex.

Elaborating on how legal aid services will be implemented, committee chairman Abdul Fareed Abdul Gafoor said lawyers will be assigned to man booths set up in courts beginning next month.

“Our members will attend to queries from the public, provide advice and, if need be, mitigate criminal cases in which an accused pleads guilty,” he told FMT.

Fareed, a former Bar president, said the first of such booths has been set up in the Kuala Lumpur court complex.

“From next month, more booths will be set up in other courts in the peninsula,” he said.

In her speech, Cheah said the importance of legal aid is found in Article 8 of the Federal Constitution, which states that all persons are equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law.

“This applies regardless of a person’s income or resources. Everyone ought to have equal access to justice,” she said.

Cheah will relinquish her post as Bar president on Saturday after having served a two-year term.

She said the council started its first Legal Aid Centre in 1980, first in a small village coffee shop and later in a wooden shack in the then fishing village of Bayan Lepas, Penang.

Over the years, she said, the Bar’s 14 legal aid centres had assisted without charge more than 124,000 people. Last year alone, the Kuala Lumpur chapter assisted 2,700 foreigners.

“These statistics show that there is a real need for legal aid in Malaysia, and today’s programme is another step forward in effectively meeting this need for those in need,” she said.