Legal Regime of Procedural Free Legal Aid in Collective Proceedings

Between Access to Justice and the Protection of Fundamental Rights

Abstract

The collective proceedings microsystem establishes a differentiated regime of liability for court costs, aiming to facilitate access to justice in the defense of diffuse, collective, and homogeneous individual rights. This article examines the peculiarities of the procedural free legal aid system in collective actions, analyzing the provisional and definitive liability of those with standing, the exceptions provided for cases of bad-faith litigation (litigância de má-fé), and the jurisprudential debates on the applicability of Article 91 of the Brazilian Code of Civil Procedure (CPC/2015). Methodologically, an exploratory and descriptive, applied research was adopted, using bibliographical and documentary sources, with a deductive method of analysis. The objective is to demonstrate that the free legal aid regime constitutes an essential instrument for the effective realization of access to collective justice, although controversies persist regarding its limits and application. It is concluded that the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) has consolidated the understanding regarding the special nature of the collective microsystem, rejecting the incidence of the general rules of the CPC concerning the advance payment of expert fees, except in cases of proven bad faith.