The Halifax Chronicle Herald features this opinion piece on law school fees.
Month March 2015
Legal Pains: The Cost of Justice Includes Physical Health
Canadian Lawyer has this piece on the new research and information sheet from CFCJ.
Important Evaluation of ClickLaw’s Wikibooks: Courthouse Libraries BC Needs your Input
JP Boyd’s Access to Justice in Canada blog mentions that Courthouse Libraries BC is evaluating its collection of wikibooks, and is looking for input.
Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice Now Open Access
Mirroring Noel Semple’s listserv post, this post mentions that the Windsor Yearbook on Access to Justice has become an open access journal.
Chasing Down the Data: How Doubtful Assertions about SRLs Sometimes Become “Facts”
The National Self Represented Litigants Project blog has a post on how doubtful assertions about SRLs can become “fact”.
What Does a “user-centred” Approach Really Mean??
Family Justice 3.4: A Family Services Administrative Agency
JP Boyd continues his series on improving family law with this post on a family services administrative agency.
Impact of Litigation on Your Client’s Health
Omar Ha-Redeye has a post on how legal problems can affect health, and mentions new research from CFCJ.
Inside the rapid growth of Axess Law
By David Wiseman:
Here is a link to an article in the current issue of Precedent magazine that I thought might be of interest. It is a profile of the lawyers behind Axess Law and how they went about setting it up. For those that don’t know, Axess Law is a new entrant in the legal services market in Ontario that aims to provide affordable services to low and middle income people. All or most of its offices are in Walmarts (!).
The business model that Axess Law uses is an interesting development in relation to improving access to justice and is receiving some attention in the ongoing consideration of whether to allow ABS in Ontario (an issue that is being considered by law societies across the country). Interestingly, both sides of that debate like to refer to Axess Law. Those who support allowing ABS cite Axess Law as an example of exactly what ABS-entities could be expected to do, although on a grander scale. Those who oppose ABS cite Axess Law as showing that ABS-type innovation in legal services, for low and middle income groups, can occur without actually allowing ABS (and without risking the purported downsides of ABS).
For those interested in the broader debate on ABS, in which the issue of access to justice is figuring quite prominently, I would draw to your attention (I don’t think I have seen it explicitly referred to on this list yet) that the LSUC ABS Working Group has released a summary of the submissions it received in relation to its Discussion Paper on ABS. The summary is available here: <http://www.lsuc.on.ca/uploadedFiles/ABS-full-report.pdf> All of the submissions are available via links on this page: http://www.lsuc.on.ca/abs/
Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada
Attached is the first fact sheet coming out of the Cost of Justice project at the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice.
This fact sheet proceeds the release of three research papers that analyze the preliminary data from our national “Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada” survey. We expect to release these papers over the course of the next 2 months.
Please feel free to share the fact sheet widely.
ajrn.org 