What is public legal education?

Public legal education promotes access to justice by providing people with knowledge about the legal system, and awareness of their rights and how to enforce them - it also informs people about where and how to get help and advice. PLE also develops legal capability by improving the skills needed to anticipate and avoid problems.

What is it all about?

Access to justice

Knowing your rights

Creating opportunities

Avoiding problems

Learning skills

Community developement and law reform

Improving people's awareness of the justice system helps build a sense of citizenship and a shared understanding of the value of rights. It encourages people to get together and talk about how law works and how it is developed.

Public legal education projects come in all shapes and sizes – they could be a campaign, an information pack, a training course, classroom teaching, a theatre production, a TV programme, a mentoring scheme, a website, or many other activities.

Projects can aim to increase knowledge of specific area's of law, or help people to develop to manage problems more effectively. Public legal education often focuses on helping people to prevent their problems from escalating, and to know when they are out of their depth and in need of expert advice.

Many organisations have been doing PLE projects for a long time. Most initiatives are small-scale and local, although there are a number of larger, nationwide projects.

The best PLE projects have a well defined target audience and put a lot of effort into understanding the needs of that audience. They also have clear and precise goals, which are tailored to the circumstances, capacities, and needs of the target audience.

Karz Ki Baatein

Karz Ki Baatein (Let’s talk about debt)was a TV series dealing with debt issues aimed at Asian audiences in the Leicester area.

The show provided information and advice in English, Hindi and Punjabi. A multilingual presenter, accompanied by two debt advice experts, spoke to callers live on air about how to avoid, reduce and manage debt problems.

The focus was on general education, information, and signposting to Leicester Money Advice for further help.

The show was broadcast by MATV, a local community television channel.

The Public Legal Education and Support Task Force (Pleas Task Force), which met from January 2006 for a year, debated and investigated the issues around PLE. They produced a definition of public legal education:

‘Public legal education provides people with awareness, knowledge and understanding of rights and legal issues, together with the confidence and skills they need to deal with disputes and gain access to justice. Equally important, it helps people recognise when they may need support, what sort of advice is available, and how to go about getting it.

Public legal education has a further key role in helping citizens to better understand everyday life issues, making better decisions and anticipating and avoiding problems.’ The report was well received 'Lord Hunt Hails start of public legal education dialogue'...you can read the full report here PLEAS Task Force report - Developing capable citizens:the role of public legal education (172 KB)

Possession Prevention Project

Possessions Prevention Project was run jointly by Southwark Law Centre and Blackfriars Advice Centre in South London. The project’s aim was to reduce the number of evictions of council tenants in Southwark due to rent arrears through early intervention and better access to advice and support.

The project worked with council housing staff, local community groups and advice services. The project developed better information for council tenants; trained community groups so that they could better recognise problems and know what to do about arrears and possession notices; and gave advice and support to local authority housing staff to improve their own procedures and information.

As a result of the project, the number of evictions has gone down, saving money for both tenants and the local authority, and reducing the social harm caused by eviction.

For more information, see the evaluation report (0.9 MB).