Public legal education as a tool for access to justice

Published in July 2007, this seminal report by the independent Public Legal Education and Support (PLEAS) Task Force called for a new approach to public legal education with the clear objective of increasing the capacity of individuals and communities to deal with law-related problems.

Following this report, the Public Legal Education Network was created. This later became an independent charity, Law for Life.

This paper by Maurits Barendrecht from Tilburg University in the Netherlands was published in July 2010. The study explores three different strategies to enhance access to justice looking in turn at legal aid, accessible court procedures and legal information. To assess whether investment in any of these will improve access to justice, the author considers costs and benefits, transaction costs and legal empowerment.

The analysis suggests that a legal information and education strategy should have a higher priority, because it empowers clients in their conflicts with others and increases the accountability of lawyers and judges.

Professor Dame Hazel Genn, a leading authority on civil justice, provided insight into the purpose of legal aid and argued for a smarter approach to legal services. Genn looks at the fundamentals of access to justice, which include an awareness of rights, entitlement, obligations and responsibilities and the ability to effectively participate in resolution systems/procedures. She promotes access to justice as a social good and lists the key purposes of publicly funded legal services as enforcement of rights, dispute resolution and avoidance for individuals, and supporting social order, economic activity, social justice, social inclusion and the rule of law for society. Genn suggests that there needs to be a refocusing of justice policy thinking and an alignment of justice policy with broader government objectives, as well as better joined-up thinking.

This report, commissioned by our predecessor, the Public Legal Education Network in 2011, considers the potential for public legal education in adult learning. It presents the findings of an inquiry among a group of experienced adult learning professionals. The opportunity to develop public legal education was enthusiastically welcomed by the participants and this report will help signpost ways in which public legal education can be developed in the adult learning world.

The 2002 article by Nony Ardill, argues that public legal education should be endorsed by the government as a valuable tool in furthering its own policy agenda. It considers the characteristics of three different approaches to public legal education:

• legal information,
• community legal education, and
• legal literacy.

Ardill suggests that an effective use of public legal education should address community or collective legal needs as well as individual ones. The article concludes that public legal education should be a tool to empower individuals and communities, foster a human rights agenda, and promote active citizenship.

The Early Action Task Force established in 2011 was a panel of experts set up by Community Links. The Task Force considered the challenge of building a society that prevents problems from occurring rather than one that copes with consequences. The report argues in favour of early intervention and enabling services, which align with public legal education which aims to create communities that are legally capable and ‘ready for everything’. The report proposes a gradual transition towards a society that is ‘ready for everything’, that needs new attitudes and new behaviours, and advocates using a new language, replacing the language of prevention with the language of readiness. It emphasises that investing wisely and early in social wellbeing yields a triple dividend – thriving lives, costing less, contributing more.

A discussion paper published in 2004 by Advice Services Alliance, the Citizenship Foundation, and Legal Action Group calls for a national strategy for public legal education (PLE) in order to increase public awareness and knowledge of legal issues, to improve active citizenship, and to strengthen civil society. The paper argues that PLE should be part of an integrated approach to legal services and should be supported by the government, the judiciary, legal professional bodies, legal education bodies, and voluntary organisations. The paper proposes that a single organisation should take responsibility for promoting PLE at a national level. As a result of the discussion, a proposal for the development of PLE was published in June 2005, recommending the establishment of a steering group to review the best ways to improve PLE.