CrowdJustice Conversations
Emily Dugan at BuzzFeed…
When retired judge Sir Henry Brooke read BuzzFeed journalist Emily Dugan’s recent groundbreaking article on people representing themselves in court, he tweeted: “Charles Dickens couldn’t have described it better”.
The “it” — a large increase in people representing themselves in court — is caused primarily by legal aid cuts. And the fact is, sometimes it’s hard to care about government spending cuts. But Emily drew out the human story of cuts to legal aid in a way that resonated with all those who suffer when they can’t access the law, and the lawyers and judges who are operating in a system that they know can do better.
We were lucky enough to get a few minutes to talk with Emily about writing the piece, the response and her major takeaways.
(The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.)
CrowdJustice: What has been the response like to your article?
Emily Dugan: There’s been a good response. It was reassuring actually. I think legal aid is one of those issues that is rumbling along in the background but perhaps people didn’t realise the scale of it or how it was affecting people. With everything, it’s slightly fallen off the news agenda since Brexit and the snap election. I suppose people had just forgotten that this was going on every day in our courts.
This is something that lawyers and judges care about a great deal. I think this goes beyond politics in the legal world.
CJ: Had you been planning on writing it for while?
ED: It’s one of those stories that had been in the back of mind to do for quite a few years and I was just sort of trying to find the best way into it and the best way of telling it in a compelling way that didn’t feel too abstract or too preachy. Obviously I wanted there to be a news side to it as well so I was digging around to find figures and research that showed what was going on. So once I had that it was just about choosing a court to tell the story from.
CJ: The 520% increase in people trying to access Personal Support Unit’s — charities whose volunteers support litigants in person — is extraordinary.
ED: Access to information is not something you would have thought of in relation to this issue. You think of [people representing themselves in court] and you think education gap and experience gap and how alien the court will feel and how hard it will be to separate your emotions — those are all things that come to mind immediately when you think about this problem. But I don’t think — it certainly wouldn’t have occurred to me — that you wouldn’t be able to look up the case law properly.
CJ: Did you get a sense that people realised how much they were missing out by not having a lawyer?
ED: It’s hard to say … certainly there were some people that were outwardly confident, and that was even more sad in a way because they just didn’t realise, or perhaps didn’t want to acknowledge it. There might have been a degree of bravado there too.
There always has been a much smaller group of people that represent themselves in court for stubborn reasons or for reasons of not want to be part of the so called ‘system’ or feeling that somehow they would do a better job themselves.
But on the whole I got the sense that most people if they were being honest with themselves realised there was something they were missing out on. And certainly there some people who very openly acknowledged that and were worried about that. You could see people realising, “my wifes got a lawyer and I just don’t know what to say.” And language is such a huge part of all this. If you’re not used to the formal language of court and you’re up against another lawyer, it’s so intimidating.
If neither party was represented it would be quite different. I think one of the interesting things here is the imbalance. I’m not saying it would be necessarily be ideal for either party not to be represented but there would at least be a sense that it was a bit fairer and wasn’t quite so skewed.
CJ: Do you think people think about access to justice as something that should be considered a “right” as outlined in the recent Bach report?
ED: I’m not sure people are thinking about access to justice in those terms when they are struggling to get ready for court, but I certainly think people had a sense — whether they were able to articulate it or not — there was something unfair going on.
Especially in cases involving children, you would hear ‘this doesn’t feel very fair’ and that certainly was a sense I got that people felt the idea that they could lose access to their children — not necessarily entirely because of not having a lawyer — but that it would certainly not help and make it more likely they would lose their case.
CJ: Do you think people benefitted from the support provided from the PSU?
ED: One of the things you did notice is that the people that had someone from the PSU with them looked a little bit less scared. You can’t really quantify that. But there is something peculiarly terrifying about sitting in a court waiting, on your own, surrounded by other people who’ve got experts with them. And even just having someone from the PSU or even just a friend or a relative with you. Those people didn’t look quite so overawed. It think it’s just really noticeable and very sad actually. Seeing people having to argue cases that would have a huge impact on their lives with no help against people who have trained in this for years and built careers over decades.
CJ: In terms of the way forward, is this just reinstating funding?
ED: I think most people feel there needs to be more funding — but the sense I have from the lawyers and legal experts that I’ve spoken to is that there is also a question mark over whether we need to completely review how we try and take these kinds of cases because the worst case scenario is one person without a lawyer and another with one. Whereas I think there are some who would probably argue that we just need to review justice system and maybe there needs to be some kind of early intervention where neither party has a lawyer or something similar. As far as I can see from the interviews I’ve done, the legal world — if you can call it that — is fairly united in feeling there needs to be a change.
