Daniela Barba, World Justice Project
Alejandro Ponce, World Justice Project
Grace Hulseman, World Justice Project
Legal needs surveys are an essential tool for understanding people’s experiences of access to justice. Based on previous analyses of the WJP Global Legal Needs Survey (WJP GLNS) in over 100 countries, we know that legal problems are ubiquitous; people with legal problems follow diverse pathways to justice beyond those available through conventional justice institutions; and vulnerable populations disproportionately face barriers throughout their justice journeys. Globally, 1.4 billion people are in the justice gap due to civil and administrative justice needs. Justice services that solve people’s legal problems are sorely needed. Yet, resources available to meet this goal are limited. How can justice actors identify where to target people-centered justice reform efforts?
The researchers take a twofold approach to address this question. First, following the justice journey tradition and considering the role of the various services in the justice chain, we systematically analyze which barriers to justice services are most highly associated with the persistence of legal problems. Simultaneously, recognizing that different legal problems disproportionately affect different population groups and involve distinct power dynamics and barriers to justice services, the researchers focus on family legal problems.
In collaboration with the Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank and leveraging the WJP GLNS, expert consultations, and an extensive literature review, the researchers find that the resolution of family legal problems is impacted most forcefully by the barriers people encounter in accessing adequate legal information and advice. The paper explores the combined effects of barriers to different legal services on problem solution, as well as the heterogeneity observed in the association between barriers to services and problem solution based on various relevant characteristics. Notably, the research finds that the solution of family legal problems for women in countries with low gender empowerment is most influenced by barriers to assistance and representation, such that justice solutions that create synergies between information and assistance and representation have a high potential of enhancing access to justice. In high-income countries and those with high gender empowerment, access to information significantly influences the solution of problems that are not brought to a dispute resolution mechanism. The approach followed in this analysis is adaptable to various types of justice problems and is suitable for use in multiple contexts.
Meredith Brown, Calibrate
This project, initiated by the Law Foundation of Ontario, has focused on finding new ways to understand and describe the impact of the LFO’s funding on A2J activities and outcomes for people. This presentation will describe the work we have undertaken so far, share our learning and highlight some of the key tensions we have encountered.
Natasha Brown, University of Manitoba, Faculty of Law (Robson Hall)
Gerard Kennedy, University of Alberta, Faculty of Law
Over the past decade, there has been considerable scholarship addressing issue of access to justice in Canada, much of it concentrating on particular provinces, such as Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia. This article seeks to fill this gap in Manitoba not through analyzing case law (though that is important) or engaging in abstract discussion about what “access to justice” means (though that can be fruitful). Rather, we have asked Manitoba legal service providers what they consider to be the greatest needs in this area.
In September 2022, all Law Society of Manitoba (“LSM”) licensees were invited to complete a survey, asking them to indicate what they consider the greatest areas of need in the realm of access to justice. We hope that the results of this survey, as explained in this article, will result in the better tailoring of policy interventions that have the motivation of facilitating access to justice.
Part I of this article provides background on the access to justice crisis in Canada and what definition of “access to justice” we are adopting for the remainder of this article. Part II explains the background and methodology of the survey that the volunteer lawyers were invited to complete. Part III describes what the survey showed. Part IV critically summarizes these results and what lessons they provide regarding what are the access to justice needs of Manitobans, including how policy can respond to this.
The results were mixed. Most respondents viewed family law to be an area that is incredibly underserved vis-à-vis importance, followed by child protection and criminal law. An assortment of reasons was noted for this. Increased resources—particularly dedicated to service provision and increased availability of free and/or subsidized services—were cited as possible solutions. These macro-level results were complemented by a host of interesting perspectives from participants, which illuminate our macro-level findings and provide other potential sources of innovation in this regard.
Matthew Burnett, American Bar Foundation
Rebecca L. Sandefur, Arizona State University
James Teufel, American Bar Foundation
Over the last decade access to justice scholars have focused increasing attention on the nexus between civil and criminal justice, including both the civil consequences of criminal justice system involvement and criminal justice system involvement related to civil legal problems. Less attention, however, has been focused on the relationship between civil and criminal problem experience through the lens of legal needs surveys. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that civil legal needs surveys and crime victimization and other criminal justice surveys are often administered separately and by different government agencies, organizations, and institutions.
This analysis compares the relationship between civil and criminal problem experience across available data from five recent legal needs studies administered between 2019 and 2021, including four surveys from the United States and one from Canada. The four US surveys include a 2021 YouGov survey with a sample size of 2,000 conducted by Rebecca Sandefur, a 2019 survey with a sample size of 1,086 conducted by the World Justice Project, a 2021 survey with a sample size of 5,308 conducted by the Legal Services Corporation, and a 2021 Intersectional Justice Study with a sample size of 3,635 conducted by Kathryne Young. The 2021 Canadian survey was conducted by Statistics Canada and included a main sample size of 29,972 and an Indigenous oversample size of 12,428.
Across these surveys, we find that while civil justiciable events are more prevalent than criminal justiciable events, reporting a civil justiciable event is linked to higher odds of criminal justiciable events (and vice versa). These surveys also suggest that issues of housing, income, family, debt, and healthcare, in particular, are associated with criminal justice experiences, and also that these different types of civil issues can be significant predictors of criminal experience even when controlling for each other. Further, some evidence suggests that criminal justice events can be strong predictors of employment, debt, and family civil justice events. We also explore the impact of sociodemographic factors (e.g. age, having children, and LGBTQ+ status). These findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of the nexus between civil and criminal problem experience understood through legal needs surveys can and should inform access to justice policy and program design.
Luis Guevara, Universidad Externado de Colombia
Ernesto Cardenas, Waapihk & University of Winnipeg
Our paper studies access to justice in Colombia by estimating the probability of inaction when facing justiciable problems. Using a unique data source containing justice paths of over 15,977 Colombians in thirteen cities, we explored the influence of justice outcomes uncertainty over problem-solving decisions. This paper uses the implementation of Tutela, a novel access to justice tool introduced in the 1991 Colombian constitutional reform, to identify treated and control cohorts of problem declarants. Results suggest that regardless of the availability of problem-solving mechanisms and justice public services, uncertainty in the paths to justice increases the probability of inaction by five percentage points. These findings were robust to parametric and nonparametric estimates, different model specifications and falsification tests and highlighted the relevance of intertemporal decision-making when designing and assessing access-to-justice policies.
Heather Heavin, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
Brea Lowenberger, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
Trisha Esmeralda, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
There are exciting currents of a culture shift underway locally and internationally in the justice sector to move from collecting data in silos towards implementing an overarching research or data framework for collection, sharing, and analysis. Absent this cultural and infrastructure shift, collected justice data will remain to have limited potential to be utilized in shaping and supporting access to justice projects. This presentation describes the approach and findings from a recent study in Saskatchewan, Canada, on how an A2J Measurement Framework could inform the development of a “justice data commons”, locally – and, we hope, beyond. Part 1 of the presentation describes some recently developed justice-related measurement frameworks and brings attention to important elements of usable and adaptable frameworks. In Part 2 of this presentation, we focus on describing why and how the A2J Measurement Framework was used in our study to analyze the extent to which the data collected by the organizations fell within measurable concepts of justice initiatives. Part 3 then provides concluding recommendations and observations about this study. It also provides insight into important next steps to be taken in creating a justice data commons that reflects the purposes of justice stakeholders, such as facilitating capacity building in the collection, sharing, and analysis of justice data.