Developing research and public legal education
Improving access to justice is a regulatory objective that cuts across a number of work-streams. This element of the LSB’s programme is delivered through both examining the structure and coverage of legal services but also, in particular, looking towards increasing the public’s understanding of legal rights and responsibilities.
Fair access to justice is a key foundation to the maintenance of civil society and one of the most difficult public policy objectives to deliver – as it depends not just on provision of services but also on empowerment of individuals and harder-to-reach groups in enforcing their rights. Because of this, improving public legal education is a key component of the agenda of widening access to justice. A better informed public will be better able to secure justice because they will be empowered both to identify when they have a legal problem and also how to find solutions capable of resolving it.
Alongside this, the LSB’s programme will seek to improve the quality and accessibility of legal services themselves – ensuring that a focus on vulnerable groups is built into services. As a key component of this work, we will be examining the experiences of those who are both financially vulnerable and ineligible for state support, as well as those consumers who find the legal system difficult to navigate. We will consider the needs of individual and business consumers. This work will help to ensure that consumers are properly protected.
Understanding how and when consumers use legal services
Monitoring the coverage of services is a key part of widening access – with regulation being appropriately evidence-based. We want to ensure that we properly understand the experiences of consumers but, most importantly, that we identify the gaps in terms of access to justice. Our work in this area will draw heavily on the LSB’s research programme and sharing evidence with the Approved Regulators, citizens and consumer groups.
As engagement with legal services tends to come at sensitive times in the lives or businesses of consumers, consumption tends to be infrequent and when consumers are under some pressure. To ease the experience of consumers and empower them, the LSB will focus activity on ensuring that consumers can find the most appropriate means of meeting their legal service needs and that they can understand the cost of different legal services because information is presented transparently and is easy to find. The development of ABS is likely to prove a great source of innovation for the delivery of services to consumers – the impact of this will be monitored.
Civil litigation costs
Another aspect of this work is our consideration of the impact that commercial mechanisms such as referral fees have on the functioning of the market – as well as determining the extent to which they constrain or support access to justice. This is an area in which we will draw from the Consumer Panel’s advice to the Board on this issue.
Useful links
- Public Legal Education aims to give people the know-how to manage the law in their everyday lives.
- Lord Justice Jackson: Civil Litigation Costs Review
Disclaimer: The LSB is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Relevant Contact
Project Manager: Lesley Davies Lesley.Davies@legalservicesboard.org.uk 020 7271 0071