The Centre for Legal Aid is a Slovakian state budgetary institution established by law to provide persons in material hardship with effective legal assistance and protection. The Centre operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic.
How can it help you
The Centre for Legal Aid can provide you with state paid legal help (the assistance of a lawyer) if you cannot afford it yourself. The Centre can provide you legal aid in civil, family, labour law and commercial law matters as well as in proceedings before a court in an administrative judiciary.
You as a natural person can receive legal aid if you meet the following criteria concurrently:
- you are in a state of material hardship, i.e. you are a recipient of a benefit and contributions to a benefit in material hardship, or your income does not exceed 1.4 times the amount of the subsistence minimum and you cannot secure the use of legal services with your property
- the dispute you are involved in is not obviously unsuccessful
- the value of the dispute exceeds the value of the minimum wage established by a special act
If your income does not exceed 1.6 times the amount of the subsistence minimum, but you cannot secure the use of legal services with your property, and you meet all the other criteria, you have the right to legal aid with financial participation in the amount of 20% of the costs of legal representation.
An application for legal aid must be submitted on a prescribed form. If your case is related to debt relief, you should use a different form. A submission may be sent by mail, electronically with a guaranteed electronic signature or through the Central Government Portal. If your application is incomplete, the Centre for Legal Aid will suspend the proceedings and call on you to rectify the deficiencies in your application. After fulfilling all the above conditions, the Centre for Legal Aid will decide on the right to legal aid within 30 days. You can submit a complaint (appeal, “sťažnosť” in Slovak) in relation to the Centre’s decision, by mail on a prescribed form you can find at the website of the Centre.
You can ask for personal consultation in any of the regional branches or detached consultation units of the Centre via a booking system.
The Centre is operating 15 regional branches and 30 detached consultation units across the territory of Slovakia.
The Centre for Legal Aid has no competence in criminal proceedings.
Helpline
You can call a helpline on 0650 105 100 if you have any questions regarding state-paid legal aid.
Activities
- Examination of applications for state guaranteed legal aid and providing assistance to eligible clients
- Providing preliminary consultations to any natural person: explanation of the conditions for the provision of legal aid, providing basic legal advice and guidance in completing an application for provision of legal aid
- Providing assistance in debt-relief situations
- Providing assistance in asylum matters, in proceedings on administrative expulsion, in proceedings on the detention of a third-country national
- Providing assistance in cross-border disputes concerning legal aid within the European Union