JURK was founded in 1974. The organization is run by law students in collaboration with the general manager, the legal adviser and our office worker.
Who can get help from us?
- Anyone that defines themselves as women may get legal assistance from JURK.
- If we have little capacity, we will prioritize helping those with the lowest income first. This means that you may be rejected because of your income.
- If you have assets at your disposal, this may be a reason why we reject your case.
- In cases regarding violence, sexual harassment or gender discrimination, we give legal aid regardless of your income.
- Both men and women are employed as case workers at JURK. If it is difficult for you to talk to a man, we will make sure that you can talk to a female case worker.
What do we expect from you?
- We expect you to be honest when you inform us about your case, and that you do not withhold information that may be of importance when we help you.
- We expect you to reply when we contact you, and that you show up to agreed time when we set up meetings.
- We expect you to help obtain any documents needed for us to assess your case (e.g. decisions from NAV, your employment contract etc.).
- We expect you to let us know if there is any conflict of interest between you and another person we are assisting.
- We expect you to only contact your case worker through JURK’s phone number, e-mail, letter or by visiting our office. If you contact your case worker privately, we will close your case.
Useful information:
Our office is open all year, except during the Christmas and Easter holidays. We are also closed when our case workers are attending seminars or other events. During these periods, it might be difficult to reach us and we do not handle cases.
- All help from JURK is free of charge. If we assist you with a case handled in the Conciliation Board (Forliksrådet) or the Rent Disputes Tribunal (Husleietvistutvalget), they require you to pay a case processing fee. We do not cover this fee for our clients, and therefore require you to pay the fee to our client bank account before we can submit your claim to the board/tribunal on your behalf.
- We get our funding from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, Oslo municipality, the Welfare Council (Velferdstinget) and various foundations. The University of Oslo finances our premises.
- We do not assist in cases regarding corporate law, tax, asylum, allodial law or insurance. We do not prepare wills or marriage settlements. There are also other cases we have to rejct because we lack competence.
- What we can do to assist varies from case to case, both depending on the legal field and the nature of the specific case.
- We do not take cases to court.
- We only assist individuals, not businesses.
- Our case workers collaborate with each other in all cases. You will get an appointed case worker who will stay in touch with you during the assessment of your case, but other case workers will also be involved in discussing your case. Everyone working at JURK has a duty of confidentiality.
- We usually call from a hidden number.
- We only assist in cases where Norwegian law applies.
Processing time
- All cases goes through a written assessment. This means that you will receive our legal advice in the form of a letter. If you need help to interpret the letter, you can call your case worker. All our letters have been controlled by several case workers.
- It usually takes 3-4 weeks before you receive a letter from us.
- If you contact us after the time limit for an appeal has expired, we might not be able to help you. The same applies if you contact us a short time before a deadline.
- If you receive a letter from us, but still need more help, it might take some time before we are able to give you a response.
Regarding our response to you:
- Unless we have agreed otherwise, our response to your legal question is an assessment of your specific case. That means that it may not apply to others who say that they have the same problem.
- In some cases, we only provide general information. We cannot always say what will be the solution in your particular case.
- You must not change any documents we have sent you and forward the amended versions to others, unless this is agreed between us in advance.
Our archive routines:
- We keep a copy of all documents in your case for 10 years after the case was closed. These copies are stored in a secure server.
Complaint:
- If you are dissatisfied with our help, please contact us. We will then consider whether there is something we should have done differently or something we can do to rectify. We cannot guarantee that a complaint leads to rectification.
Closing and rejecting cases:
- If you do not meet the requirements listed under “What do we expect from you?”, we may close your case. If you still want help, you may contact us again to request that we open a new case.
- If helping you might cause a conflict of interest with an existing client, we have to reject you.
- If you contact the media without consulting us first, we might have to reject your case.
- We cannot assist in cases involving great amounts of money.
- If we lack capacity, we might reject cases concerning lump sums of less than NOK 3,000.
- If we have already made an assessment of your case, we will not assess it again. We will not process cases that has already been assessed by other legal aid organizations or jurists/lawyers, unless we consider the help you have received to be very unsatisfactory.
- If there are any circumstances which are apt to impair confidence in our impartiality (e.g. personal relationships), we will have to reject your case.
- If you threaten or harass our employees, we will reject your case.
- We do not accept discrimination of our employees based on age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, skin color, religion, gender identity, gender expression or disability. Discrimination of our employees will lead to a rejection of your case.
- We cannot help if you are already assisted by a lawyer.
Obligations and liability
- Neither you nor we can claim compensation for error, defects, damage, accidents, virus or similar problems with electronic communication.
- Any claims against us has to be directed towards JURK as an organization, not the individual case worker.
Code of Conduct for Lawyers
- We follow the Norwegian Code of Conduct for Lawyers, developed by the Norwegian Bar Association (Den Norske Advokatforening) where these are applicable to our work.
Privacy Policy:
- Please see our Privacy Policy statement on our website to learn more about how we manage your personal data.