The paper deals with the forces that led to the establishment of the community clinics, their relationships to the judicare system and the purposes behind the government’s assumption of responsibility for funding and defining clinics. It highlights the scope of the service, community involvement, and funding decisions that must be structured very carefully in order to enhance clinics’ abilities to engage in meaningful representation with the establishment of government funded community clinics.

Recommendations include:

• Workload of the judicare model not be transferred to clinics
• Not defunding clinics on the basis that the priorities of majority must prevail
• Maintaining independence of clinics
• Community involvement needs to be recognized as it’s the most vital element in the unique characteristics of Ontario clinics
• Individual clinics must define more systemically the scope of services they want to provide
• Clinics must define the limits of the service mandate set out in the R egulation
• The service mandate of clinics requires an appreciation of their role in the context of Legal Aid Plan’s judicare program
• Clinics must be confident that their community organizations are scrupulously independent of other community groups