Free Legal Advice Research Articles

Building Sustainable Free Legal Advisory Systems: Experiences from the History of AI & Law

The enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) as a source of solutions to problems is not new. In law, from the early 1980s until at least the early 2000s, considerable work was done on developing ‘legal expert systems.’ As the DataLex project, we participated in those developments, through research and publications, commercial and non-commercial systems, and teaching students application development. This paper commences with a brief account of that work to situate our perspective. The main aim of this paper is an assessment of what might be of value from the experience of the DataLex project to contemporary use of ‘AI and law’ by free legal advice services, who must necessarily work within funding and other constraints in developing and sustaining such systems. We draw fifteen conclusions from this experience which we consider are relevant to development of systems for free legal advice services. The desired result, we argue, is the development of integrated legal decision-support systems, not ‘expert systems’ or ‘robot lawyers’. We compare our insights with the approach of the leading recent text in the field, and with a critical review of the field over twenty-five years. We conclude that the approach taken by the DataLex project, and now applied to free legal advice services, remains consistent with leading work in field of AI and law. The paper concludes with brief suggestions of what are the most desirable improvements to tools and platforms to enable development of free legal advice systems. The objectives of free access to legal information services have much in common with those of free legal advice services. The information resources that free access to law providers (including LIIs) can provide will often be those that free legal advice services will need to use to develop and sustain free legal advisory systems. There is therefore strong potential for valuable collaborations between these two types of services providers.

Symbolism over substance? Large law firms and corporate social responsibility

ABSTRACTAt its core, corporate social responsibility (CSR) concerns the impacts of businesses on their surroundings. Despite their significant economic and geographic presence (and, as a corollary, their potential significant impacts), and despite the varied disciplinary and conceptual lenses used to study CSR, there is very little existing work looking at law firms and their own CSR policies. This paper fills part of that gap. In August 2014, we reviewed the websites of the top 100 English law firms, as ranked by the trade publication The Lawyer. We were interested in public disclosures made by those law firms on CSR. These were widespread. The majority of the top 100 firms say something to the wider world about CSR. However, what is said varies significantly. This is, perhaps, unsurprising. What is more surprising is that so few firms explain why they are committed to CSR. Where firms do make disclosures on CSR, these tend to group around the following three areas: (i) pro bono and community giving; (ii) diversity and inclusion; and (iii) environmental matters. For a number of firms, little or no distinction is made between pro bono (i.e. the giving of free legal advice) and wider ‘community giving’. We question whether this is the right approach. We were also concerned that, despite there being regulatory intervention by the Legal Services Board as regards the collection and reporting of diversity data by law firms (and other lawyers), the quality of disclosures (in terms of the amount, nature and breadth of data reported on) varied to such an extent that we were unable to draw any meaningful comparisons or conclusions on diversity in English law firms.

‘Bridging the Academic/Vocational Divide: the Creation of a Law Clinic in an Academic Law School’

<p>In January 2009 I joined the Law School at the University of Hull. My main responsibility has been the establishment and development of a public serving Law Clinic providing free, confidential and independent legal advice to the local community. Clinic became operational from January 2010 and will be offered as an assessed module as part of the LLB degree, from September 2010.</p>

Models of Clinic and Their Value to Students, Universities and the Community in the post-2012 Fees Era

<p>The number of clinics in existence within higher education institutions has continued to proliferate in recent years. The 2011 LawWorks1 report examining the pro bono work undertaken within Universities in the United Kingdom found that at least 61 per cent of all Law schools now offer pro bono activities to their students,2 with 40 respondents offering clinic. This compares with 53 per cent of respondents offering pro bono activity and 11 respondents offering clinical activities in 2006. This evidence suggests that an increasing number of Law Schools recognise the benefits of clinic to students. However, the arrival of a new era in higher education funding arguably requires some reflection on (and perhaps greater articulation of) those benefits and the priorities of clinic activity overall, in order to ensure that the expectations of the key clinic stakeholders (the hosting institution, student volunteers and participating members of the public) are met. Concerns that the significant reduction in state funding for higher education will impact adversely on institutional resources is well-documented and at an institutional level there is likely to be increased scrutiny of the efficiency of devoting scarce resources to clinic activity in a climate of lower (or potentially lower) income streams and leaner budgets. Similarly, some students are likelyto exhibit a heightened sense of wanting value for money in their expectations of clinical education and may well demand greater input in the design of clinic activity. Against this, there has been a general and significant reduction in funding for the provision of free legal advice and an associated increased demand amongst the general public for quality free legal advice and access to justice. Therefore, for new and established clinicians alike, the post-2012 era provides the opportunity for, if not necessitates, reflection on the expectations and ambitions of the three key clinic stakeholders (the host institution, the student volunteers and the general public) and, particularly, the question of whether they are sufficiently aligned with each other and the priorities of the clinic activity in place. Arguably, the possibility of conflicting priorities for clinic originating from these key stakeholders and methods of resolving them has featured little in the academic commentary. This paper seeks to contribute to such a debate by offering some insights into resolving these tensions. Taking the interests of each stakeholder in turn, this paper discusses methods of maximising the efficiency of administering the clinic and managing student expectations.</p>

The Unbundling of Legal Services and its Implications for Law Librarianship

This paper addresses the role of law libraries with respect to online sites that give free or low-cost legal advice. In this paper, I will argue that the gap in access to legal services for the lower and middle class needs addressing, and that the public law librarian’s role in facilitating access to justice can be improved by helping pro se patrons access the growing number of free or nominal cost online legal advice resources. The rise in online legal advice sites comes with concerns from the legal profession regarding the possible ethical duties and responsibilities of giving legal advice in a new medium, and the role of the law librarian in referring people to these services is constrained by the values of law librarian’s professional ethics. These concerns are valid and warrant serious consideration, yet they are only beginning to be addressed by the profession. I will argue that as the ethical concerns stemming from the proliferation of online legal advice sites are addressed, regulated, and managed by the legal profession, public law librarians should not ignore their presence but embrace their potential role in facilitating access to the information available to patrons in a new technological medium.

Community Reparations to Transform Community Desolation

Community Reparations to Transform Community Desolation

Informed Citizens? Knowledge of Rights and the Resolution of Civil Justice Problems

AbstractPrevious studies have highlighted the paucity of knowledge possessed by people in a number of jurisdictions with regard to specific legal issues and processes, yet what has not been fully understood is the practical impact of this lack of knowledge. This paper looks at how knowledge of rights affects the resolution of civil justice problems. Data were extracted from a large-scale survey of adults’ experience of rights problems throughout England and Wales (10,537 adult respondents). The results demonstrated that most individuals were not aware of their rights at the time the problem occurred (64.8 per cent). Knowledge was shown to be poorest amongst those with mental illness, those without higher qualifications and those renting their homes. Problems where knowledge was poor included clinical negligence, welfare benefits and neighbours issues. Knowledge did not appear to be related to a particular problem-solving strategy but had an impact on the fulfilment of objectives and the obtaining of advice. Our findings depart from existing literature by indicating that knowledge of rights alone is not associated with legal self-sufficiency in terms of a reduced dependence upon legal advice services. We find, however, that individuals, with knowledge of rights, experience better outcomes when they opt to handle their problem alone. Accordingly, the presence or absence of knowledge of rights may be a useful proxy measure of legal advice need and relevant to the process of legal aid rationing. Our findings highlight the role that Public Legal Education (PLE) (both ‘rights-based education’ and ‘just-in-time/self-help’) may play in disposing of less complex problems, while presenting a strong case for the continued availability of free legal advice services. The research is discussed in the context of the recently announced legal aid reforms in England and Wales and their anticipated impact.

Access Across America: First Report of the Civil Justice Infrastructure Mapping Project

ACCESS ACROSS AMERICA is the first-ever state-by-state portrait of the services available to assist the U.S. public in accessing civil justice. The report documents, for the nation as a whole and individually for the 50 states and the District of Columbia: Who is eligible for free civil legal information, advice or representation (civil legal assistance services); How civil legal assistance services are produced and delivered; How eligible people may connect with services; How civil legal assistance is funded; How civil legal assistance is coordinated; How both no-fee and fee-generating limited-scope civil legal services are regulated. The overall picture is one of a great diversity of programs and provision models, with very little coordination at either the state or the national level.Principal Findings: Diversity and Creativity: The existing civil legal assistance infrastructure is, in effect, the output of many public-private partnerships, most of them on a small scale. Publicly supported programs exist to provide assistance in accessing civil justice to a wide range of groups, including the low-income population, the elderly, American Indians, veterans, homeless people, people with disabilities, and people with HIV/AIDS. In addition, some free services are offered to the general public. States exhibit a great diversity of models for delivering civil legal assistance and for connecting with eligible populations. Innovative means of connecting with clients and delivering services are becoming more wide-spread, including co-located services, hotlines, and various forms of court-based limited legal assistance. Funding for civil legal assistance comes from a wide range of public and private sources.Fragmentation and Inequality: States differ substantially in the resources available to support civil legal assistance, in the kinds of services that are available, and in the groups served by existing programs. Little coordination exists for civil legal assistance, and existing mechanisms of coordination often have powers only of exhortation and consultation. Thus, in most states, the public civil legal needs are not routinely assessed and no entity can ensure that services in specific areas match the needs of the eligible populations in those areas. However, even with these limited powers, the presence of coordination mechanisms is related to some of the differences between states in funding for civil legal assistance and may affect the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery.Geography as Destiny: Diversity and fragmentation combine to create an access to civil justice infrastructure characterized by large inequalities both between states and within them. In this context, geography is destiny: the services available to people from eligible populations who face civil justice problems are determined not by what their problems are or the kinds of services they may need, but rather by where they happen to live.

Ideologies and practices of multilingualism in bureaucratic and legal advice encounters

The increasing growth of foreign immigration to Spain has changed the communicative reality of various types of institutions. Civil servants, doctors, teachers, social workers and all sorts of service providers face new communicative challenges in their daily professional practice. The changing face and voice of their clientele calls into question habitualised forms of service delivery based on the homogeneity of practices and worldviews (Moyer and Martín Rojo 2007). In this paper, we undertake a comparative study of the multilingual practices observed in two service contexts dealing with transnational migrants in Barcelona: a state legalisation office and a free legal advice service offered by a non-profit organisation. We use various types of interactional, observational and textual data. Our theoretical standpoint is that of critical sociolinguistics (Blommaert 2003; Heller 2007). We problematise the role of language in social life and try to shed light on the ways in which linguistic practices are deeply implicated in processes of stratification and social exclusion. The analysis of our data shows that, in spite of their different social missions and grounding ideologies, the two institutions examined reproduce hegemonic stances towards service communication which problematise multilingualism and ignore the exclusionary effects that overlooking communication-related matters have for certain groups of migrants. Both organisations assume Spanish to be the normal, logical and natural language of communication and neglect the need for more fluid and unproblematising forms of multilingual practice.

Choice, Privacy and Publicly Funded Legal Advice at Police Stations

Section 58 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 confers on all suspects held in police custody a right to consult a solicitor in private. The free legal advice which suspects arrested for certain minor offences can request is restricted to telephone advice from a call‐centre operated by CDS Direct. It is lawful for the Legal Services Commission to restrict the delivery of legal advice in this way. Empirical research, however, reveals that there are police stations that lack the facilities for suspects to speak by telephone with legal advisers secure in the knowledge that what is said will not be overheard. It is unlawful and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights to expect suspects to speak by telephone to a legal adviser under such conditions.

‘Let's get it over with’: early findings on the factors affecting detainees’ access to custodial legal advice

This paper explores why detainees in police custody decline free and independent legal advice whilst they are in police custody. To do this, I draw on three kinds of data (participant observation, interviews and custody records) collected in a predominantly privatised police custody area in the South-East of England. Detainees’ decisions to decline legal advice were shaped by their perceptions of it (e.g., how long they would have to wait to consult with a solicitor). These perceptions were in turn affected by the practices of solicitors (e.g., only attending the police station immediately prior to detainees’ interviews) and the practices of police and private security staff (e.g., their use of informal conversations and negative stereotypes about solicitors). To conclude, I examine the implications of the research for detainees’ access to justice, inter-professional relationships and the privatisation of the police custody process.

Free Legal Advice on the Internet

On numerous online discussion forums in various countries, ordinary people pose specific legal questions and both ordinary people and lawyers answer them. This article considers this new and rapidly growing method of providing legal advice. It emphasizes qualitative over quantitative issues. It seeks to answer questions such as “What kind of questions are being asked?”; “What sort of people are giving legal advice?”, “What sort of people are getting legal advice?”. For those few legal systems that I know something about, I also have considered the question, “How good is the advice?” This is a comparative study, involving discussion forums for Armenian, Australian, Austrian, Brazilian, Canadian, Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Moldovan, Portuguese, Russian, Scots, Spanish, Swiss, Ukrainian, United Kingdom, and United States law.

Sun in Winter: A Toronto Wartime Journal, 1942 to 1945 (review)

Reviewed by: Sun in Winter: A Toronto Wartime Journal, 1942 to 1945 Glenn Wright (bio) Gunda Lambton. Sun in Winter: A Toronto Wartime Journal, 1942 to 1945 McGill-Queen’s University Press. 290. $34.95 Gunda Lambton had no easy time of it - she arrived in Canada from London, England in the fall of 1940 with a young daughter; she was now safe from the Blitz, but she was pregnant and her marriage was in shambles. She arrived with few possessions and little money. Gunda had been born in Germany in 1914, her father German, her mother English - a family background that would from time to time raise suspicions, especially since her younger brother was in the German navy. Officially, she was a 'war guest' in Canada; unofficially, and more to the point, she [End Page 497] was a struggling young mother with two children, happy to be away from London, but uncertain of her future. After a brief stay with friends of her mother-in-law in Barrie, Ontario, Gunda moved to Toronto with her two daughters and quickly demonstrated a spirited independence that would sustain her throughout the war years. Sun in Winter is an intermittent journal of Gunda's war. She held a series of jobs, including shift work at the John Inglis plant and office work for the CCF; she moved half a dozen times from one rooming house to another, but never lost sight of her objective - to provide for herself and her family. And throughout the uncertainty, she retained her dignity and met the challenge of being a single mother during the war when accommodation, especially with children, was difficult to find, and costs were high for transportation to and from work, day care, and even the necessities of life. Until she landed a job with Victory Aircraft, Gunda relied on the kindness of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. She subsidized her income by doing portraiture (the book is sprinkled with reproductions of her fine work) and by carefully managing what little she had. The journal features a number of cameo appearances: union organizers Bill and Larry Sefton provided Gunda with employment and encouragement; Andrew Brewin offered her free legal advice; she met Nathan Cohen and they shared their interest in theatre and the arts. A fascinating cast of characters - landlords, fellow workers, and car pool companions - wander through the pages of Gunda's journal, bringing to life the daily routine of life in wartime Toronto. Caught up in personal upheaval often brought on by war, Gunda Lambton's account of her life in Toronto between 1942 and 1945 - a sequel to Frankenstein's Room, her brief memoir of growing up in Nazi Germany published in 2000 - is one woman's story of resourcefulness and courage in times of great uncertainty. She tells an engaging story in her journals, and while the text is marred with almost two dozen typographical errors, Sun in Winter is an interesting and perceptive account of the home front during the Second World War and the life of one young woman who met the challenge of being a single mother in a time of personal and social upheaval. Glenn Wright Glenn Wright, National Archives of Canada Copyright © 2005 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Violence in the Accident and Emergency Department.

Crimes of violence are recorded increasingly frequently, including those involving health professionals. We reviewed records of violent incidents kept for a major Accident and Emergency Department over a ten-year period. Details were recorded in a Violent Incident Book by all grades of A/E staff, and separate records were kept by hospital security officers. A total of 407 incidents were recorded. Numbers, rank and sex of staff assaulted, types of assault, injuries received, weapons used and characteristics and disposal of perpetrators were recorded. Many were young males who had been drinking: others were regular attenders, of whom three subsequently died and one convicted of murder. Nurses and male doctors appeared to be at the greatest risk of assault and receptionists at the least risk. Recording of violent incidents and subsequent prosecution seemed inconsistent, and may have reflected the lack of a code of practice in this area. Suggestions are made about preventing, predicting and dealing with violence, and its aftermath, in the A and E department, including the use of security officers and closed circuit television, waiting room design, the recognition of body language and signs of alcohol or substance intoxication. The importance of staff support after an assault is emphasized, including immediate and long-term counselling, provision of legal advice, criminal or civil court action, victim support schemes and the workings of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Free legal advice for staff assaulted at work should be included in the terms of service of NHS staff.

Department of Information Free Legal Advice for Troops

"Department of Information Free Legal Advice for Troops." Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 25(12), p. 572