What does access to justice look like when legal help is distant, difficult to navigate, or disconnected from the communities it is meant to serve?

Many of the sessions at the Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada conference explored approaches that bring legal information, services, and support directly to people. The following resources highlight mobile legal services, community-based navigation, medical-legal partnerships, and responses to the connections between housing, safety, and justice.

Bringing Legal Help to Rural Communities

You Have to Find Them First and That’s a People-Centered Process: Learning about People-Centered Justice through the Rural Mobile Law Van

In this 2023 CFCJ paper, Ab Currie reflects on lessons from the Rural Mobile Law Van project at the midpoint of its three-year pilot. The paper considers how proactive outreach can help identify unmet legal needs and connect people in rural communities with support, while noting that its observations are lessons from the project rather than findings from a structured evaluation of people-centred justice.

Juristes mobiles

Juristes mobiles is a three-year Quebec research-action project testing ways to provide free, first-line legal services directly within communities that face barriers to traditional legal services. The project works with local organizations to identify community needs, test mobile and community-based approaches, and adjust services based on what is learned in the field.

Vers une justice de proximité au Québec : Projet Juristes mobiles

This first research report from the Juristes mobiles project examines barriers to law and justice experienced by underserved communities in Quebec. It describes the project’s approach to designing, testing, and evaluating community-based legal services in partnership with Info Justice and the Institut québécois de réforme du droit et de la justice.

Connecting Housing, Safety, and Justice

The Journey to Housing Stability for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

This multi-year report from the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario examines the experiences of survivors of gender-based violence navigating Ontario’s housing and legal systems. It identifies barriers to safe and stable housing and calls for specialized legal services and policy responses informed by survivors’ experiences.

Community-Based Navigation and Support

Ottawa Black Justice Navigators Program

Jaku Konbit’s program provides culturally responsive information, navigation, advocacy, and referrals for Black individuals and families interacting with the justice system. Justice navigators help people understand court and correctional processes, their rights and options, and available legal and community supports.

Justice Pro Bono (également disponible en français)

Justice Pro Bono connects people and community organizations in Quebec with volunteer legal services. Its community-based programs include medical-legal partnerships, legal clinics in Nunavik, psychosocial legal clinics, support for migrants with precarious status, and referrals to free or low-cost legal resources.

Watch the Conference Sessions

The related conference sessions are also available online:

• You Have to Find Them First: Meeting Legal Needs of People in Remote Locations
• Innovating for Impact: New Models of People-Centred Justice
• Co-Designing Justice: Participation as a Design Method

This is the fourth in AJRN’s September series sharing resources connected to the 2026 Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada conference.

See you later this week for the final post in the series!

How can legal services and justice systems be designed around the people who use them?

Several sessions at the Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada conference examined how legal design, digital tools, and artificial intelligence can improve access to justice. They also considered the importance of ensuring that innovation is guided by people’s needs, experiences, and rights.

The following resources offer practical examples and approaches to designing legal information, services, and systems that are more accessible and responsive.

Designing Accessible Legal Tools

CLEO’s Guided Pathways

Community Legal Education Ontario’s free Guided Pathways provide step-by-step support to help people complete legal forms and navigate processes involving family law, housing, human rights, immigration, income assistance, small claims, and other areas. The tools ask users questions and use their responses to generate tailored legal information and documents.

Building Systems That Learn and Adapt

CREATE Justice

The University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Research, Evaluation, and Action Towards Equal Justice brings together research, evaluation, and action aimed at making justice more accessible. Its work includes testing design methods, developing collaborative and community-engaged approaches, and advancing justice data, measurement, and program evaluation.

Artificial Intelligence and Administrative Justice

Artificial Intelligence Monitor for Immigration in Canada and Internationally

The Artificial Intelligence Monitor for Immigration in Canada and Internationally researches and monitors governments’ use of artificial intelligence in immigration and administrative decision-making. Its work focuses on transparency, accountability, human rights, and the effects of automated systems on migrant communities.

Keeping Innovation People-Centred

What Is People-Centered Justice?

This World Justice Project resource explains how people-centred justice begins with understanding people’s legal needs, the ways they try to resolve their problems, and the obstacles they encounter. It considers how data, prevention, legal information, accessible services, and collaboration across sectors can help justice systems respond more effectively.

Watch the Conference Sessions

The related conference sessions are also available online:

• Making Knowledge Usable: Language, Literacy, and Legitimacy in Justice
• Workshop: The Architecture of Change: Building Systems that Learn and Adapt
• Co-Designing Justice: Participation as a Design Method
• Beyond the Algorithm: People-Centred Design in an AI Age

This is the third in AJRN’s September series sharing resources connected to the 2026 Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada conference.

See you next week for the final two!

What does it mean to put people at the centre of justice?

At the Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada conference, several sessions explored the importance of listening to people who navigate justice systems and creating meaningful opportunities for them to participate in justice reform.

The following resources examine lived experience, participation, power, and the barriers that can prevent people from being heard.

Experience as Knowledge

Having a Say: Democracy, Access to Justice and Self-Represented Litigants

Jennifer Leitch’s 2016 doctoral dissertation draws on the experiences of self-represented litigants to examine access to justice as a question of meaningful participation. It considers how people can have a greater voice in the legal processes and institutions that affect their lives.

Participation and Power

HELP-M Toolkit (également disponible en français)

The HELP-M Toolkit helps family mediators identify and respond to family violence, coercive control, power imbalances, and safety concerns. It offers guidance for conducting safer and more appropriate family mediation.

How to Make Legal Proceedings in Canada More Child Friendly?

In this 2025 Canadian Bar Review article, Anne Levesque, Daniella Bendo, Jean-Frédéric Hübsch, and Mona Paré examine barriers children and youth face when defending their rights in Canada. Drawing on research into human rights commissions and tribunals, child and youth advocates, ombudsman offices, and international human rights mechanisms, the authors identify practices that could make legal proceedings more accessible, participatory, and responsive to children.

Access to Justice for Trans People (également disponible en français)

Published by the Canadian Bar Association, the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario, and the TRANSforming JUSTICE Research Team, this report draws on the experiences of trans people to identify legal problems, systemic barriers, and opportunities for reform. It emphasizes trans leadership, intersectional analysis, preventative approaches, and changes extending beyond courts and tribunals.

A Public-Centred Understanding of Access to Justice

“What is Access to Justice?”

Trevor Farrow’s article develops a public-centred understanding of access to justice, informed in part by research into how members of the public understand justice. It argues for placing the people who use justice systems at the centre of access-to-justice research and reform.

Watch the Conference Sessions

The related conference sessions are also available online:

• Before Data, We Listen: Reclaiming Experience as Knowledge
• Nothing About Us Without Us: Rethinking Participation and Power in Justice

This is the first in AJRN’s September series sharing resources connected to the 2026 Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada conference.

See you next week for more!

Happy September, and welcome back to the AJRN!

In May, the Action Committee on Access to Justice held its inaugural national conference, Advancing People-Centred Justice in Canada: Data Sharing and Knowledge Building, in Ottawa.

The conference brought together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, community organizations, and justice-sector leaders to share research, practical tools, emerging initiatives, and ideas for improving access to justice across Canada.

Throughout the conference, we heard calls from attendees for a central place to find the many reports, articles, toolkits, projects, and other resources being discussed.

In response, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice has assembled a collection of conference-related resources for the AJRN. The collection includes materials shared at the conference, along with related work by conference speakers and participating organizations.

Throughout September, we will publish the collection in a series of short, themed posts covering:

• lived experience, participation, and people-centred justice;
• justice data, evidence, and evaluation;
• legal design, technology, and artificial intelligence;
• rural, remote, and community-based access to justice;
• law reform, professional roles, regulation, and funding;
• and recordings from the conference sessions.

This is a curated collection rather than an exhaustive or official conference archive. We hope it helps extend the knowledge-sharing that began in Ottawa and makes this work easier to find, use, and build upon.

Watch this space for the first resource post later this week.