Abstract

This chapter follows the development of the Chilean Legal Aid Service founded in 1932 and administered by the Chilean Bar Association until 1981. It argues that in twentieth-century Chile, legal aid and the organised legal profession were deeply interdependent. The Bar Association supported legal aid because it served as a device to train and control lawyers through a system of mandatory internships for law students and the disciplinary supervision of court-appointed lawyers. Eventually, however, this symbiotic relationship became parasitical because the Bar Association began funnelling part of public funding destined to legal aid to its own budget. Also, the bar prioritised its goals of controlling lawyers over improving access to justice. Furthermore, when lawyers resisted the mandatory legal aid requirements, the bar privileged professional solidarity over effective control of the quality of legal aid. Thus, while initially the intermingled relationship between legal aid and the bar acted as a positive synergy allowing both institutions to grow in tandem, over time it became detrimental to the Legal Aid Service, and in the long run, to the Bar Association itself. Indeed, both institutions entered a period of crisis in the 1960s, and against the bar’s interests, they were separated in the 1980s.