Introduction

The Swedish Law of the Realm of 1734 created the groundwork for legal aid in Sweden.^[457] Its Chapter on Trials (Sw. rattegdngsbalken) prescribed that those who had the court's permission to practise advocacy were obligated to help the poor before the court for free, if the judge ordered

¹I am grateful to the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation for funding my research and enabling me to write this chapter.

it.^[458] Finland was part of Sweden until 1809, and even after it was annexed to Russia as an autonomous Grand Duchy, legislation from the Swedish era remained in force. Thus, the Law of 1734 was still valid in nineteenth­century Finland. However, the provision on legal aid in the Law of 1734— which certainly followed foreign examples—had virtually remained a dead letter in both Sweden and Finland.^[459] It was not until the 1870s in Sweden, and 1880s in Finland, that the first real steps in organising legal assistance to people of limited means were taken. This chapter analyses the begin­ning of legal aid in Finland in the late nineteenth century.

In order to understand why the provision on legal assistance in the 1734 Chapter on Trials was ineffective, and why it was only in the late nineteenth century that legal aid truly emerged, one must examine the state of the judiciary in nineteenth-century Finland, and the drastic changes in the structure of society that occurred especially towards the end of the century.

Although the state connection to Sweden was severed in 1809 when Finland became part of Russia, the judiciary in Finland was not russified. The Finnish judiciary remained essentially the same as it had been for cen­turies under Swedish rule.

While the first traces of professional advocates^[462] in Sweden and Finland can be found in the seventeenth century, on a larger scale, professional advocacy virtually did not exist coming to the nineteenth century. The law was simple enough for ordinary people to understand, and this was all the more important as there was a significant lay element in the courts of law.^[463] In continental Europe, university-trained advocates were already common in the Late Middle Ages as law and legal procedure grew too complex for laymen to understand.^[464] In early-nineteenth-century Sweden and Finland this was not yet the case. There was no monopoly for legally trained advo­cates, and anyone could represent themselves or another person in court. The lack of trained, professional advocates explains why the provision on legal aid in the Law of 1734 remained a dead letter. As hardly any profes­sional advocates existed, there was no-one the courts could have man­dated to offer free legal aid. However, the lack of legally trained, professional advocates does not mean that there was no need for legal assistance in society.

In 1858, a statute was passed that enabled indigent people to obtain documents from court for free but, other than that, still no legal assistance was provided to them.^[466] In an overwhelmingly rural country with a lay- dominated and fairly simple legal system, there was no pressing need for organising legal aid. However, in the second half of the nineteenth cen­tury, especially in its last decades, industrialisation and urbanisation changed the structures of society creating an urban working class. At the same time, the legal sphere was also facing significant changes, which included the growth of professional advocacy. In Finland, the question of legal aid began being discussed in the 1880s, and in 1886, the first Finnish advocate for the poor began his work in the capital Helsinki. This chapter investigates the first steps of legal aid in Finland in the late nineteenth century: what were the societal and legal reasons for establishing legal aid to the poor and who was the driving force behind the plan? How did the Helsinki poor’s advocate function during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century—what kind of cases were handled and who were his clients?