Poor areas to get free legal aid

A volunteer group of 30 lawyers and 70 law school graduates left Beijing yesterday bound for 70 counties without lawyers in remote western areas to offer legal aid services. They will work there for one to three years.

This is the first group of volunteers of '1+1' China Legal Aid Volunteer Action, a program started in May by China Legal Aid Foundation, aimed at helping poor counties lacking legal services. The areas served are Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, and Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions.

Some 210 counties in China do not have lawyers, according to China Legal Aid Foundation, the organizer and fundraiser of the program.