My last post talked about the great work being done by Stanford’s Legal Design Lab and how I’m trying to replicate this kind of work in Toronto with a team of volunteers based out of Civic Tech Toronto. In this post, I want to:
- provide a brief explanation of what “access to justice” means for potential volunteers who may be encountering the topic for the first time; and
- set out an aspirational vision for the Law & Design project team at Civic Tech Toronto.
Access to Justice in Ontario
The large majority of middle to low income Canadians can’t afford to see a lawyer and find it hard to access clear and reliable information that could help them deal with legal problems.
The term “access to justice” or “A2J” is a catch-all referring to problems relating to user experience, system design, cost, and poor outcomes. Over the last 15 years, the legal profession has often characterized A2J issues as reaching “crisis-levels.”
To make an analogy with health care, it’s as if Canada lacked public health insurance and the large majority of Canadians could not afford to see a doctor when they needed to. As a result, government and nonprofit organizations stepped up to:
- provide general information to the public (to help them avoid health problems or help them with self-treatment); and
- make emergency medical care available to the most vulnerable (by providing services directly or through subsidies).
The “A2J sector” refers to the government and nonprofit organizations who do this work.
These are the major players in Ontario’s A2J sector:
Over the last thirty years, a lot of work has gone into researching the causes of A2J issues, measuring the scope and severity of problems, and coming up with solutions. While these efforts have provided valuable insights into causes and potential solutions, it’s unclear whether the many projects, pilots, and initiatives have had much of an impact because:
- it’s hard to define, track, and measure A2J outcomes;
- levels of funding have been low relative to the scale of the problem; and
- projects may not have used efficient/effective ways of reaching users and addressing their problems.
Over the last few years, Canada’s A2J sector has begun to acknowledge the need to go beyond conventional approaches to creating change — that is, beyond more studies, reports, & recommendations and more pilots designed and managed by lawyers. For example, Access to Justice British Columbia recently released a “Framework for Action” which noted that:
Lawyers are good at logical thinking. If logical thinking alone could have solved the access-to-justice problem, it would have been solved by now. We need a new approach that addresses the complexity of the problem.
[We have] come to recognize that taking a new approach requires a shift in justice system culture:
While the A2J sector’s funding and mandate are unlikely to change in the near term, I think there’s significant potential for changes to A2J sector methods, i.e. learning about and integrating design thinking, agile practices, working in the open, and new media formats/channels.
I believe community organizations like Civic Tech Toronto can help illustrate the value of these methods through well-scoped projects and focused engagements with institutional collaborators.
Vision for the Law & Design Team @ Civic Tech Toronto
We see a future A2J sector that:
- Is user-centered;
- Engages citizens;
- Adopts a legal literacy/capability approach;
- Has strong data collection practices; and
- Innovates through cross-sector collaboration.
To get to this future, the sector’s current products, practices, and culture need to incorporate new knowledge & skills and adapt to changing lifestyles & media environments.
The Law & Design Team at Civic Tech Toronto wants to help facilitate the changes needed to bring the A2J sector into the digital age. We intend to do this by collaborating with and working alongside A2J institutions to:
- design, build, iterate and improve products;
- learn and implement new knowledge, skills, practices, and paradigms;
- grow a rich, cross-sector network of collaborators;
- foster citizen engagement, understanding, and ownership of justice issues.
In future posts, I’ll discuss what “access to justice” means in greater detail, describe some important A2J research & initiatives, and explore how the sector fits into larger trends like digital government and legal technology.
Thanks for reading and your feedback is always welcome!
