The Helsinki Poor’s Advocate
After the Helsinki committee had finished its report, things moved forward quickly: the Helsinki town council appointed an advocate for the poor, as well as a dispute settlement board (Fi.
sovintolautakunta) for legal aid cases, so that going to trial could be avoided.[519] This followed the model that had been adopted in Gothenburg, in Sweden. Indeed, it was emphasised that the aim was to find amicable settlements rather than going to court. However, the Helsinki advocate for the poor stated in his report in 1902 that the option of having the dispute settlement board settle cases had remained a dead letter. Clients, he said, were reluctant to let another body than a court of law decide their cases.[520] If a settlement could not be reached amicably between the parties, they rather turned to the courts for a decision instead of going to the dispute settlement board.The qualifications the Helsinki poor’s advocate needed to meet, next to being a lawyer, were “skilfulness, impartiality, and good will.” Some years later, when the town of Turku decided to employ an advocate for the poor, the candidate had to be “a skilful, experienced, and if possible philanthropic man” (Fi. “taitawa, kokenut ja mιkalι mahdollista ihmisystdwdllinen”).[521] Characteristics such as “good will” and “being philanthropic” suggest that legal knowledge alone was not enough when working in legal aid. The ability to connect with poor clients seems to have been important, too. This resembles the way in which, for example, in Germany and the U.S., lay women and social workers who worked in legal aid were seen as having a holistic approach to the problems of the poor.[522] Certainly, the Finnish poor’s advocates were trained lawyers and focused on legal questions. Still, it seems that the town councils hoped to employ lawyers who had some compassion for the problems of the poor.
The first advocate for the poor in Helsinki was Gustaf Sucksdorff (1856-1902), a lawyer who took office in January 1886. Sucksdorff received his law degree in 1883 after which he probably began working in advocacy.[523] After beginning his work as advocate for the poor, he apparently continued his private practice, as well. In 1888, for example, we find advertisements for the joint office of Forselles and Sucksdorff which provided various commercial and legal services such as selling securities and properties, making investments, drawing up contracts and testaments, conducting estate inventories, and going to court. Forselles took care of the commercial part of their business while Sucksdorff focused on the legal side. Interestingly, the address of Forselles’s and Sucksdorff’s office was the same as that of the poor’s advocate’s office, Unionsgatan 32. This means that Sucksdorff handled legal aid cases from his own private lawyer’s office. An advertisement for the poor’s advocate stated that Sucksdorff could be met at Unionsgatan 32 on workdays between 9 and 10 A.M.[524] In fact, until the Helsinki Legal Aid Office was established in 1911, the poor’s advocates would advise their clients in their homes or private offices. This was no longer feasible as the caseload grew and the poor’s advocate was given an assistant, which is why Helsinki, in 1911, acquired premises for the legal aid office.[525]
In January 1887, Gustaf Sucksdorff gave his first report to the Helsinki town council. In it, he discussed the guiding principles he followed in his work. In all kinds of cases, his foremost goal was for the parties to find an amicable settlement. The way he approached cases was to gather all relevant information from his client. This, he complained, was difficult and time-consuming, as most of his clients had “limited education and insights,” and therefore were unclear in explaining their situation. If Sucksdorff found the case to be without merits, he would advise the client so, and he claimed that such clients were content with this assessment.
If he found there to be grounds, he contacted the opposing party, trying to persuade them to settle the case. Usually this worked, and the parties settled the dispute between themselves. Sometimes Sucksdorff would formulate a settlement suggestion himself. In all but one case, the parties accepted this suggestion. If the parties could not agree, Sucksdorffs approach differed depending on whether it was a civil or criminal case. In civil cases, he would represent the party whose claims, based on the evidence, seemed to be just (Sw. rattvis). In criminal cases where his client was the injured party, he distinguished between those driven by the public prosecutor and those that depended on the actions of the injured party. In the first case, he directed his clients to contact the prosecutor. For the latter, he offered his representation if it was not a minor offence such as minor assaults or slander. For minor offences, where he felt his client was in the right, he might draw up the complaint on their behalf. If the client was the defendant in a criminal case, Sucksdorff would offer his help if he felt the defendant was innocent or if there were mitigating circumstances.[526]The poor’s advocate offered some information on the number and types of cases that he handled. The most common were debt cases (32), followed by marriage disputes (25), disputes with a landlord (Sw. hus- bonde) (23), and actions for damages (21). In total, Sucksdorff noted 176 cases during 1886. In 36 cases, a settlement had been reached; 21 were decided in a trial. In 36 cases, Sucksdorff had only prepared some briefs and in 10 cases only given oral advice. Six cases had been referred to the prosecutor. In 21 cases, he had declined representation. By the end of the year, 48 cases were still not resolved.
It took some time for clients to find this new service: in January, Sucksdorff noted only 4 cases, but the number peaked in October at 34. However, the actual number of clients was much higher than 176 as Sucksdorff did not account for those whom he only gave brief advice without taking the matter further.
Noting all contacts would have taken up too much time and would have been of “little statistical interest,” said Sucksdorff.[527] In the 1903 report, for example, one can find some information about what cases were recorded. It stated that due to the large number of advice-seekers, only those which led to a trial or where a trial seemed imminent, were recorded in detail. More specifically, the number of such cases in 1903 was 134, while the total number of client meetings was 3730—on average slightly over 12 meetings per day.[528]Unfortunately, it seems that different poor’s advocates recorded cases in slightly different ways in their reports, so for some years one finds different information than for others. It is still possible to make some observations on the types of cases. Looking at the statistics up to 1901, one can see that certain types of cases appeared more frequently than others. For example, in the early years, disputes with an employer were most common, as well as cases of child support.[529] Later, debt cases and various petitions and applications were also common. Other types of cases included actions for damages, marriage disputes, rent disputes, actions for recovery, as well as assault, slander, and other crimes. The majority of client meetings, however, only involved providing some brief advice, and of those cases recorded in the report, the majority were not decided in court.[530] While the statistics only noted a limited share of all client meetings, the poor’s advocate’s report from 1902 made reference to the topics of all client meetings. It stated that the majority of clients turned to the poor’s advocate because of debt cases, disputes over wages, other disputes with employers, rent disputes, and marriage disputes.[531] Thus, in general, cases listed in the statistics also give a pretty good picture of the topics of all client meetings.
It appears, at least based on the reports, that the poor’s advocates did not make a moral judgement regarding what types of civil cases to accept. For example, in the U.S., divorce was a controversial issue for legal aid offices, and many organisations refused to handle divorce cases.[532] The Helsinki poor’s advocate regularly handled cases listed as “marriage disputes” (Sw. Uktenskapstvister, Fi. avioriidat). It would seem that these included divorces. In 1907, the statistics listed, for the first time, separately the category “divorces,” and after 1908, they were listed together as “divorces and other marriage disputes.”[533] The number of granted divorces in Finland had grown over the course of the nineteenth century, and in the early 1910s, around 200 were granted annually.[534] If the poor’s advocate asserted some discretion, it seems to have been based on whether or not he felt the claims were justified—regardless of the case type. In 1889, the Helsinki poor’s advocate, Gustaf Sucksdorff, reported that when he first began his work, clients “not seldom” sought his help to benefit in one way or another of “legal gimmicks” (Sw. “juridiska knep”) they hoped he would provide. As time had passed, people grew accustomed to the functions of the poor’s advocate and knew not to bring him dubious claims.[535]
Who, then, turned to the poor’s advocate with their legal problems— what did a typical client look like? Unfortunately, the statistics and reports from the first years do not specify the backgrounds of the clients. However, from 1904 onwards, the poor’s advocates’ reports listed the occupation of the clients. The statistics from 1906 serve as an example.
Table 1 reveals that over two-thirds of the clients in 1906 were women, and domestic servants made up the largest group, followed by other working women and those who were only listed by their marital status—married women and widows.
As for men, it is the general category “workmen” that is the largest. There is no reason to believe client occupations in the earlier years would have been different. Over the years, the share of women seems to have been consistently larger than that of men. For example, in 1910, 348 (roughly 60%) of the altogether 583 clients were women. In 1915, women made up approximately 70% of the legal aid office’s clients,Table 1 List of the occupations of the Helsinki poor’s advocate’s clients in 1906a
| Occupation | Number of clients |
| Domestic servants (female 41, male 3) Widows Workmen Married women Factory workers (male 9, female 5) Merchants, craftsmen, petty entrepreneurs Seamstresses and wool knitters (female) Women workers Laundresses and ironers (female) Nurses (female) and masseuses Former sharpshooters Porters Dairy worker (female) Night guard Loinen (someone without permanent residence, living in the quarters of their employer) Women Men Together | 44 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 4 3 3 2 1 1 1 109 48 157 |
aXI. Sovintolautakunta, Kertomus Helsingin kaupungin kunnallishallinnosta 1906 (1909). I have added the word “female” in parentheses, when the Finnish word indicated gender but the English one did not
in 1920 80%, and in 1925 and 1930 around 75%.[536] Even later in the century, in 1950 and 1970, around 70% of the Helsinki legal aid office’s clients were women.[537] Studies in Denmark in the 1970s also show that while men used lawyers’ services more often than women, it was more common for women to be legal aid clients.[538] Therefore, it appears that in 1884, the Finnish Women’s Association was right in its assessment that legal aid would specifically benefit poor women. It did and continued to do so in the following decades.
However, while one writer in the Turku-based newspaper Aura characterised the employment of advocates for the poor as a “work of love,”[539] the towns with their poor’s advocates did not receive acclaim from everyone. By 1900, members of the rising socialist labour movement began to express their concerns about the fact that legal aid was not organised by workers themselves. Bourgeois lawyers working as poor’s advocates, employed by town councils, did not fight hard enough for their workingclass clients, socialist writers felt. For example, in 1905, the socialist newspaper Tyomies (Eng. “Working Man”) noted that of 3783 clients seeking help during the previous year, the Helsinki poor’s advocate had taken action in only 148 cases. “Did those [other] 3,635 people come completely in vain to bother the poor’s advocate?” the writer asked in frustration. Similar writings appeared in several socialist newspapers during the first years of the twentieth century.[540]
In 1903, the Social Democratic Party of Finland (founded in 1899 as the Finnish Labour Party) demanded in its party manifesto that legal aid be available throughout the country and that the advocates for the poor be appointed by the indigent people themselves. In the following years, the Social Democratic Party and the Finnish Trade Union Federation (founded in 1907) planned to provide legal assistance to workers themselves. In the 1910s, this plan was realised as a “Workers’ Legal Advice Office” (Tyovaen IakiasiainneuvontMoimisto) was founded and began advising workers in the premises of the party office. Moreover, in several towns, private workers’ law firms were established by lawyers favourable to the labour movement. It is clear that the Finnish labour movement was influenced by German examples of legal aid. Writers often referred to the German “Workers’ Secretariats” (Arbeitersekretariat), for example.[541] However, despite the labour movement’s hopes of having a say in the organisation of public legal aid, it continued to be in the hands of the municipalities. It remained there until 1998, when the duty to organise legal aid was transferred from the municipalities to the state.