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CLEO’s research work

Did you know?

In addition to conducting research, CLEO monitors others' research from Canadian and other jurisdictions on public legal education and information and access to justice. We add research reports to our research database on a regular basis.

Shifting the Paradigm

CLEO’s report, Shifting the Paradigm, has now been posted by the Department of Justice Canada, in English and French. The report provides a review of recent developments in regulatory action and program activity aimed at improving access to justice through assistance provided by nonlawyers in community-based not-for-profit settings.

Supporting community justice help

CLEO is exploring approaches to support "community justice help" - enabling community workers in the nonprofit sector to give help to people who come to them with life-affecting problems that include a legal element. Our research proposes a framework that discusses three dimensions of high-quality community justice help. For more information, visit our Supporting community justice help page.

Reducing the complexity of court forms

CLEO's new paper, Family Law Guided Pathways: Reducing the Complexity of Court Forms, reports on our review of the Guided Pathways to make them easier to use and understand. The pathways are online tools that help people fill out court forms. The complexity of court forms is a major barrier to access to justice for people who are not represented by a lawyer.

Our other current research work

CLEO currently has four other research projects underway:

Exploring the potential of Generative AI for document assembly

Evolving Legal Services Research Project

Measuring outcomes and impacts of interactive tools

Regulating technologies to advance access to justice

Making “smart” forms work for people

Our past research

Family Law Guided Pathways: A Direct-To-Public Automated Legal Tool (2019)

Connecting incarcerated people or people who were formerly incarcerated with legal information and related life skills training (2018-2019)

Legal Life Skills: a curriculum for adult learners and trainers (2016-2018)

A framework for Ontario: Introducing a working legal capability matrix (2016)

Building an understanding of legal capability: An online scan of legal capability research (2016)

Public Legal Education and Information in Ontario: Learning from a Snapshot (2015)

Don't smoke, Don't be poor, Read before signing: Linking health literacy and legal capability (2015)

Public Legal Education and Information in Ontario Communities: Formats and Delivery Channels (2013)

Multilingual Legal Information: Issues in Development and Delivery (2009)

Exploring the Expansion of CLEONet: Final Project Report to the Law Foundation of Ontario (2009)

Tapping the Community Voice: Looking at Family Law Self-Help through an Access to Justice Lens (2008)

Aboriginal Peoples and Access to Legal Information (2006)

Linguistic Access Report (2005)

Public legal education: Helping people understand and exercise their legal rights (2005)