The “Supporting Law Students to Serve the Public” Law Foundation of Ontario 2016 report is now available online. The “Supporting Law Students to Serve the Public” report highlights the Foundation’s ongoing support of legal education through grants to law schools and as a main funder of Pro Bono Students Canada. To learn more about the ways that the Law Foundation of Ontario is promoting diversity in the legal profession, responding to access to justice needs and advancing access to justice, read their recently published report here:  http://www.lawfoundation.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/LFO-2016-annual-report.pdf.

<< Aider les étudiants en droit à servir le public >> rapport annuel 2016 de la Fondation du droit de l’Ontario est disponible en français ici: www.lawfoundation.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/FDO-Rapport-annuel-2016.pdf.

In the recently published “Access to Justice – Unaffordable Legal Services’ Concepts and Solutions”, Ken Chasse discusses a support services model that would offer more cost-efficient legal services delivery, maintain the current management structure of law societies and make legal services more adequately available. Chasse posits that, “the unaffordable legal services problem is not a legal problem” but rather, “a permanent civil service-type institute” that continuously develops and evolves can lend expertise to law societies about cost-cutting strategies that can be employed to make law services more affordable. To read more about this approach to counter unaffordable legal services, view Ken Chasse’s paper here.

Also related, read another recent publication by Ken Chasse -“No Votes in Justice Means More Wrongful Convictions”, that explores how “government neglect of the justice system reduces the quality of justice available”. This second paper is available here.

On May 13, 2016 the University of Victoria Access to Justice Centre for Excellence (UVic ACE) hosted a research colloquium attended by 23 participants from a spectrum of British Columbia justice organizations and agencies. The objective of the colloquium was to bring together various justice stakeholders to discuss the possibility of developing a BC justice framework. Discussion at the colloquium was centred around 3 topics:

A. The nature, status and consequences of the research problem: In defining the problem, colloquium participants agreed that there must be a more coordinated effort in gathering empirical data.

B. Laying the groundwork for the creation of the framework: The consensus among colloquium participants was that over-arching strategic justice system objectives must be set out to achieve the framework.

C. Concrete steps for the design and implementation of the framework: The scope of the research framework was discussed at length, with colloquium participants ultimately agreeing that the project should not involve other provinces due to limited resources and problems of cross-provincial coordination.

As part of the day’s discussion, Uvic ACE proposed a number of ways that it could help advance the justice research framework project after the colloquium. Subject to securing the necessary funding, UVic ACE agreed to contribute in the following 5 ways:

1. Establishing a provincial, multi-sector Research Framework Working Group (“RFWG”) to pursue the design and implementation of a justice research framework
2. Working with RFWG in the undertaking of research, providing outreach and information, and convening further colloquia
3. Preparing a report recommending objectives and guiding principles to inform BC justice research and the work of the RFWG
4. Preparing a literature review on justice research frameworks, a paper analyzing options for data scan, and an inventory of existing Canadian A2J research
5. Encouraging interest among UVic faculty and students in support of access-oriented justice research projects

   To view the full Colloquium Report containing a more fulsome discussion of the research framework and UVic’s proposals for contributing to the ongoing project click here.

To date, there has been much discussion on the impact of technology on traditional legal practice in terms of virtual law firms, online dispute resolution (ODR), and other innovative legal software. At the same time, however, there has been surprisingly little discussion of the impact of technology on A2J for those with low income.

With the intention of filling an important void, The Legal Education Foundation in London has funded a new website: http://law-tech-a2j.org to serve as a resource on developments at the intersection of “law, technology, and access to justice.” The initiative follows from two previous annual reports for 2014 and 2015 (available here), which talk about developments in the field. At present, one of the website’s main features is a blog by researcher, journalist, and legal services consultant Roger Smith (OBE). Other external contributions include pieces from ADR and ODR experts, a piece from a UK developer of family law software, and an account from Hackney Community Law Centre.

The website is looking to post around 10 blogs per month on topics that pertain to the following themes:

1.  General overviews
2. The impact of and approaches to overcoming the digital divide
3. Legal developments of relevance to those who are poor (ex: use of guided pathways, automated documented assembly, ODR)
4. Innovative ways in which digital provision may be integrated with and supplement conventional services
5. The potential use of technology to supplement legal services in low income countries

The website is currently inviting blog contributions (around 800 words in length, 1500 being the maximum) for those interested in writing on any of the above themes. Furthermore, the website is also looking for volunteers to be part of a reference group. If you would like to write a contribution for the site, participate in the reference group, or provide any additional feedback, please email Roger at rsmith@rogersmith.info.

In the U.S., legal researchers, unlike medical professionals, do not have the benefit of drawing funds from a federal agency like the National Institute of Health, which provides more than $30B in grants annually to medical researchers. As such, systemic efforts to collect data about the health of legal systems have been lacking.

There has been somewhat of a renaissance in access to justice research in recent years, which Elizabeth Chambliss, Renee Newman Knake and Robert L. Nelson explore in their paper entitled, “Introduction: What We Know and Need to Know About the State of ‘Access to Justice’ Research”.

At the forefront of this access to justice renaissance there has been a collection of 16 seminal White Papers published through the American Bar Association’s Commission on the Future of Legal Services. According to Chambliss et al, the collection has two primary goals:

1.  To inform the Commission and its audience about the facts on the ground by presenting the most recent research on issues of relevance to the Commission
2. To promote the development of shared conversations among academic researchers, legal services providers, and legal services regulators

To use the words of Chambliss et al, “taken together, these sixteen White Papers offer a rich, empirically grounded survey of ‘what we know and need to know’ about the future of legal services.”

For information about the various White Paper topics and themes as well as other access to justice initiatives, view the Report .

One of the most pressing access to justice challenges facing low and middle-income countries is being able to offer basic legal services in a financially viable manner. As a means of addressing this problem, the UK-based Law and Development Partnership recently wrote a report entitled “Developing a portfolio of financially sustainable scalable basic legal service models.”

Looking at 17 countries as case studies, the report calculates the costs of taking particular interventions to scale by factoring variables such as population size and delivery costs. In terms of its methodological approach, the report seeks to answer three key questions:

1. What do we know about the unit costs of basic legal services and how can we calculate them;
2. How can scaled up legal services be financed sustainably; and
3. What are the political conditions that enable justice models to be taken to scale?

Beyond suggesting increases in government funding, the report looks at a variety of other options to scale up delivery, drawing on examples from health and education sectors as well as private sector sources. Some of the report’s key recommendations include:

• Using legal needs surveys more widely in justice sector interventions to gain a better understanding of basic legal services demand
• Piloting more innovative financing mechanisms and modalities, as well partnerships between donors and private investors to open up funding streams
• Incorporating the collection of a broader range of cost and benefit data in basic legal service programing to asses the value for money of provision

View a brief description of the report or read a full version of the “Developing a portfolio of financially sustainable, scalable basic legal service models” report.