Research Database

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 […]

Indigenous Public Legal Education and Information Final Report and Recommendations – July 2019

This report addresses the existing public legal education and information (PLEI) produced for Indigenous communities in British Columbia, especially about child protection. The research methodology included a literature review and focus groups with Indigenous and other service providers who help Indigenous people with legal problems. It was found that the existing PLEI for Indigenous users […]

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 […]

Apples and Oranges: An International Comparison of the Public’s Experience of Justiciable Problems and the Methodological Issues Affecting Comparative Study

This report compares large-scale national surveys of the public’s experience of legal problems, noting that many of them differ significantly in length, scope, types of problems included, question formulation, and data structure and analysis. It also presents findings from five online experiments that tested the impact of various question formulations on problem prevalence, use of […]

Selected Annotated Bibliography of National and Regional Legal Needs Surveys

This bibliography compiles brief annotations of almost 60 legal needs surveys conducted from 1990 to 2016 in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and several other jurisdictions.

Community legal education and information at Legal Aid NSW: activities, costs and future planning

This Australian report presents findings from the first stage of a three-stage review of public legal education and information (PLE) activities conducted by Legal Aid NSW, and discusses strategic directions relevant to PLE practitioners more broadly. The first stage of the review involved a desktop audit of face to face PLE, the distribution of paper […]

Is early intervention timely?

This report examined the intersection of early intervention strategies and disadvantage to find out whether marginalized people can actually be reached with information before the point that a legal problem escalates to the formal resolution stage. The author noted that “the value and the impact of an intervention is not necessarily linked to its timing […]

Lawyering for change: Seven principles of strategic legal practice for community legal centres

This Australian report examines the potential for community legal centres (CLCs, analogous to Ontario’s community legal clinics) to use their legal work to effect broader systemic change. The author spoke to almost 100 lawyers, advocates and academics in Australia and other jurisdictions, and used her findings from these interviews to identify the following seven key […]

Legal Health Check online portal for community workers: Project Report June 2015

This report describes a suite of “legal health check” or legal screening tools developed by a non-profit, community based legal organization in Australia to help train and provide resources for front-line community workers who help marginalized people. These tools are intended to be used to help community workers detect legal problems and refer to appropriate […]

Poverty Law, the Future of Legal Services and Access to Justice: Towards ABS+

This paper examines the growing trend of Alternative Business Structures (ABS), whether they will be able to dispense legal services, and whether ABS can be modified to provide more access to justice for people facing poverty law issues. The author concludes that there might be a way to develop a modified form of ABS, or […]