Research Database

A Tool for Justice: A Cost Benefit Analysis of Legal Aid

This report canvasses the results of more than 50 cost and benefit studies of legal aid programs from around the world, including Canada, to identify the role of publicly-funded legal services vis a vis economic growth. The report concludes that “improving legal aid services is as important for economic growth as providing functioning hospitals, schools […]

Community Justice Help: Advancing Community-Based Access to Justice

This report proposes a framework for “community justice help” that discusses the core principles behind good-quality community justice help and offers markers of good quality. The draft framework has been informed by recent research conducted by CLEO and the uOttawa Faculty of Law into how community workers and other trusted intermediaries can be better supported […]

Community Legal Centres in the Digital Era: The Use of Digital Technologies in Queensland Community Legal Centres

This report addresses the use of technology by eight different community legal centres in Queensland, Australia. It draws on data collected from semi-structured, qualitative interviews with employees of the community legal centres. The report finds that the community legal centres preferred to adopt digital technologies that assisted with their organizational needs over client-oriented services, attempting […]

Conducting legal need surveys in the Australian context: challenges and options

This Australian report canvasses challenges faced in conducting large scale legal needs surveys. The researcher notes that the demographic profile in Australia has changed significantly since the last large scale legal needs survey in that country, over a decade before. The report concludes that consideration must be given to the questions asked, including what types of […]

Investing in Justice: A Literature Review in Support of the Case for Improved Access

This literature review by the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice focuses on the cost to individuals and society resulting from the gap in access to civil justice. The researchers reviewed data from 50 countries around the world. The report offers case studies on legal aid funding in Australia, England and Wales, as well as the use […]

Law… What is it Good For? How People see the Law, Lawyers and Courts in Australia

This report explores findings from an Australian study canvassing people’s attitudes to the relevance of the law and lawyers in various everyday scenarios. In particular, the study and report measure: how accessible people feel courts and lawyers are how confident they are when faced with legal issues to what extent people recognise law as relevant […]

Legal Tech for Non-Lawyers: Report of the Survey of US Legal Technologies

This report canvasses the findings from a U.S. survey that identified digital technologies developed to help non-lawyers with justice problems. The survey identified 322 technologies designed for use by non-lawyers in US jurisdictions that were in existence as of Autumn The research focuses largely on access to justice in low-income communities and others who currently […]

Narrowing the Access-to-Justice Gap by Reimagining Regulation Report and Recommendations from the Utah Work Group on Regulatory Reform

This U.S. report outlines the findings of a task force on lawyer regulatory change in the State of Utah. The task force recommends that Utah  significantly loosen, or possibly repeal, a state bar rule prohibiting law firms and other legal services operations from sharing fees with non-lawyers. Such a move would make it easier for […]

Self-Represented Litigants & Legal Doctrines of “Vexatiousness”

This report canvasses Canadian case law on cases involving self-represented litigants, with a view to exploring trends in legal decisions regarding “vexatiousness” on the part of people representing themselves in court proceedings. The report flags concerns about conflation between intentional process “abuse” by people representing themselves and genuine confusion and mistakes that people might make […]

Summaries of Randomized Control Trials in the US Legal Profession

This research tool provides summaries of 50 randomized control trial studies conducted in the U.S. The studies were identified in 2016 research by Harvard’s A2J Lab. That research defined “randomized control trials” as studies that met five criteria: They had to be conducted in the United States They must have been field studies of real-world […]