Legal Aid Society (LAS) - Justice as Infrastructure: From a Prison Clinic to a National Access-to-Justice Model
In the years after retiring from the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice (retd.) Nasir Aslam Zahid chose to spend much of his time where the law is most often out of reach: inside Karachi’s prisons.
He wasn’t there as a judge. He was there because he kept meeting under trial prisoners, including women and young people, who had been detained for years without representation, without understanding their cases, and sometimes without ever meeting a lawyer.
That reality became the beginning of something practical and reform-minded: a small legal clinic for under trial prisoners, women detainees, and young offenders. Quiet work, built around a simple principle: constitutional rights mean little if people cannot access them.
Years later, during one of those visits, a young law student met a girl her own age behind bars. That student was Haya Emaan Zahid. The encounter stayed with her, not as a “case” but as a reminder of how easily vulnerability can be produced by systems: poverty, distance, delay, and silence.
In 2013, Justice Zahid formalised that prison-based effort into the Legal Aid Society (LAS). What began as a clinic has grown into an access-to-justice institution with national reach, anchored in Sindh, and expanding through legal advice, legal tech, and systems reform work across Pakistan.
The justice gap is structural
Pakistan’s justice gap is often described in terms of backlog. As of 31 December 2023, net pendency across Pakistan’s courts stood at 2.26 million cases. But the backlog is only one part of the story.
The deeper problem is access. Many people do not know what their rights are, where to go, or what a legal process will cost them in time, money, and social consequences. Women may be denied inheritance and told it is a “family matter.” Survivors of violence may step away from the legal process because systems feel unsafe, confusing, or impossible to navigate. For low-income families, each court date can mean a day’s wage lost, transport they cannot afford, and pressure to stay quiet.
LAS was built to respond to that reality: justice failure is rarely loud. It is procedural, incremental & often invisible.
A structured model: prevention, response, reform
Over the past decade, LAS has developed an operating model that works across three connected fronts: prevention, response, and reform.
Prevention starts before a dispute becomes a case file. Through a network of trained community paralegals, we support legal awareness at the grassroots, helping people understand their rights early and connect to remedies sooner.
Response is what happens when harm has already occurred and people need a pathway to remedy. We provide free legal advice and representation for those who cannot afford counsel, and we work to reduce the distance between a legal problem and a practical next step.
Reform is about changing the architecture that creates the justice gap in the first place. If courts remain overloaded, justice will remain delayed. Many civil disputes can be resolved faster and more humanely through structured mediation instead of years of litigation.
Measurable scale
This model is designed for scale, and it is backed by delivery channels that people can actually reach.
Community legal empowerment: Publicly reported figures show more than 700 community paralegals trained &mobilised, supporting community-level legal empowerment across districts.
Legal information at scale: LAS reports equipping more than 140,000 community members with legal literacy, often the first step toward seeking help safely and early.
Free legal advice: Through the Sindh Legal Advisory Call Centre (SLACC), people can access legal advice without travel or fees. LAS reports that more than 475,000 people have received legal advice through its services.
JusticeTech: In 2024, LAS launched NAZ Assist, a free multilingual legal advisory chatbot, adding another access point for people who may be unable to call, visit an office, or disclose their situation openly.
Court congestion solutions: Through MICADR, LAS reports over 2,900 disputes resolved through ADR and more than 450 justice-sector actors trained in mediation.
Justice Hubs: bringing justice closer
The next phase of institutional growth is the Justice Hub model: community-anchored access points designed to combine legal information, advice, referrals, and dispute resolution in one place.
The idea is simple: justice should be geographically proximate. In districts where administrative systems feel impenetrable, a local hub can act as an entry point, helping people navigate documentation issues, connect to legal advice, and pursue either court-based remedies or mediated solutions.
Legacy & leadership
Justice Zahid’s founding vision was clear: constitutional guarantees must translate into lived protections. Under Haya Zahid’s leadership, LAS has grown from its original prison clinic roots into a multi-channel access-to-justice institution, expanding its footprint and investing in tools & partnerships that can sustain impact at scale.
Beyond charity: justice as stabilising infrastructure
Access to justice is often framed as a moral imperative. It is also public policy.
When property disputes drag on for years, assets remain frozen. When women cannot claim inheritance, economic dependence deepens. When survivors disengage from legal processes due to complexity & delay, impunity strengthens.
LAS’s prevention, response, reform architecture offers a practical hypothesis: justice delivery can be decentralised, data-informed, and community-anchored, without losing rigour.
It began in a prison corridor. It now operates through helplines, legal tech, community paralegals, ADR systems, and district-level hubs. And it continues to ask a basic question: if justice is a constitutional right, why should geography, income, or gender decide who can access it?
Board Members
Justice Nasir AslamZahid
Mr. Asadullah Jamil
Justice ArifHussainKhilji
Dr. HabibaHasan
Barrister Furkan Ali
Justice Muhammad Ather Saeed
Ms. RabiyaJaveri
Dr. Samia K. Babar
Mr. Adnan Javed
Ms. Hajerah Ahsan Saleem
For Donation, Contact
+92-21-35634112-4
0800-70806
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