The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family (CRILF) has published a new report entitled, Summary Legal Advice Services in Alberta: Year 1 Results from the Community Legal Clinic Surveys.

This report, which was prepared for the Alberta Law Foundation by Institute researchers, Joanne Paetsch and Lorne Betrand, examines the results of initial and follow-up surveys of 3,300 clients receiving services from legal clinics operated by Calgary Legal Guidance, Edmonton Community Legal Centre, Central Alberta Community Legal Clinic and Lethbridge Legal Guidance after one year of data collection, and has important implications for legal clinics across Canada.

• The vast majority of clients reported that a 30-minute meeting with lawyer was sufficient to talk about their legal problem.
• The most frequently discussed legals problems related to family law, landlord-tenant disputes and immigration.
• Family law problems were more likely to be issues for clients who had completed some university or college than clients who had completed high school or less.
• The vast majority of clients strongly agreed or agreed that they had a better understanding of their rights and responsibilities after their meeting at the clinic.
• In the follow-up survey, clients who received a written summary of the advice they received were significantly more likely to strongly agree or agree that they had a better understanding of their rights and responsibilities after their meeting at the clinic.

Summary Legal Advice Services in Alberta: Year 1 Results from the Community Legal Clinic Surveys is available on the CRILF website.

On 18 April 2017, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family formally launched The Alberta Limited Legal Services Project. The primary goals of the project are to determine whether limited scope legal services, also known as limited scope retainers and unbundled legal services, improve people’s ability to access justice, and to assess clients’ and lawyers’ satisfaction with limited scope legal services. Secondary goals include encouraging lawyers to provide these services as a component of their existing service offerings, improving public awareness of these services as an alternative to the traditional start-to-finish retainer, and creating a pool of lawyers trained and willing to provide limited scope services.

The project presently involves about 50 lawyers, with offices located throughout Alberta, practicing in almost every area of law. CRILF has focussed on family law, being the area of greatest need, and 40 roster lawyers provide service in this area. We will be surveying lawyers and clients alight through the data-collection phase of the project, which will wrap up in September 2018. The project is funded by a grant from the Law Foundation of Ontario.

The project website can be found at http://albertalegalservices.com/index.html and features: a list of roster lawyers, sorted by name, by area of practice and by location of practice; information for clients; and, practice resources for lawyers, including a model retainer agreement, best practices, a training video and frequently asked questions. Project materials are available at no charge to anyone interesting in replicating or repurposing the project elsewhere.