Copy

JUNE 2016
Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

 

The "Paralegals, The Cost of Justice and Access to Justice" study is a Cost of Justice project, led by Professor David Wiseman, that aims to identify the role of paralegals in the Ontario residential tenancy dispute resolution system and to analyze the impact of paralegals on the costs of justice and access to justice, especially for low-income tenants.

In a recent research update, published on the CFCJ website here, Wiseman compares findings from five years of data gathered for the case study. The final year of data, follows a consistent trend from previous years and confirms that paralegals play a more significant role in landlord representation in tenancy disputes, and are not a sufficiently affordable and accessible option for tenants.

For more information about the “Paralegals, the Cost of Justice and Access to Justice: A Case Study of Residential Tenancy Disputes in Ottawa”, project, visit the CFCJ's Cost of Just project page here.

Le forum canadien sur la justice civile est très heureux d’annoncer que notre fiche descriptive sur les problèmes juridiques quotidiens et les coûts de la justice au Canada est présentement disponible en français! Cette fiche descriptive fait partie du projet sur les coûts de la justice (2011-2017) qui examine les coûts sociaux et économiques du système de justice canadien.

Les faits qui sont présentés au document sont des constatations clés de « Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada: Overview Report » rédigé par Trevor C.W. Farrow, Ab Currie, Nicole Aylwin, Les Jacobs, David Northrup et Lisa Moore.

Le projet sur les coûts de la justice est financé par une subvention du Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines.

In a recent piece on the changing culture of legal aid in Nova Scotia, CFCJ senior research fellow, Dr. Ab Currie highlights four service areas where the Nova Scotia Legal Aid program (NSLA) has responded to the National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters’ call for change:

  1. Criminal legal aid in Halifax  
  2. Family law services in Dartmouth  
  3. Social justice program in Kentville  
  4. Aboriginal justice program in the Province  

Currie warns against a narrowly defined view of “legal” problems, emphasizing that legal problems are often embedded within a cluster of non-legal problems. In order to effectively respond to the growing legal need in this country, the legal aid model must reorient its approach to client service. There must be a “culture shift”. Read more about this shift, innovation in service delivery and expanding access to justice at Nova Scotia Legal Aid  in Dr. Currie’s “We are Here to Help” paper here.

THE COST OF JUSTICE IN CANADA AND OTHER PRESENTATIONS

The past few weeks have been busy ones at the Forum, with CFCJ staff and researchers presenting data and findings from our SSHRC-funded Cost of Justice project at a number of national and international conferences. Here is an overview of some of our recent presentations.

THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW TEACHERS - THE COST OF JUSTICE: DATA, INNOVATION AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE

The Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) hosted its 2016 annual conference in Calgary from May 30-31 on the theme of “Energizing Communities through Legal Education”. The CFCJ’s Nicole Aylwin, Trevor Farrow and Jennifer Leitch, along with CFCJ Research Alliance member and Windsor Law Professor, Dr. Noel Semple hosted a roundtable discussion on the next stages in access to justice research, and spoke in detail about the ways that evidence-based data can and is being used to develop and advance national A2J strategies. The presentation included an overview of the initial findings of the CFCJ’s Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada survey.

  

THE ACCESS TO SOCIAL JUSTICE SYMPOSIUM, BUILDING A2SJ: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONVERSATION ABOUT PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

For the Access to Social Justice Symposium, Building A2SJ: An Interdisciplinary Conversation About Problems and Solutions, Trevor Farrow, Nicole Aylwin and CFCJ Board member Jerry McHale organized their presentation around the key themes in the Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada: Overview Report and the impact they might have on funding and policy recommendations in the access to justice landscape. To view the presentation slide deck from the Access to Social Justice Symposium, visit the CFCJ website here.

LAW AND SOCIETY ANNUAL CONFERENCE: DISCUSSING THE FUTURE OF ACCESS TO JUSTICE RESEARCH

For the Law & Society 2016 annual conference, CFCJ Cost of Justice researchers Trevor Farrow, Nicole Aylwin, Ab Currie, Matthew Dylag, Les Jacobs and Lisa Moore hosted a roundtable session to discuss: the A2J landscape in Canada, the Cost of Justice project, its sub-projects and their different methodological approaches, the limitations of self-reporting and a problem-centred approach, research findings related to legal capability and problem complexity, the ways to measure legal needs and A2J and, what's next for legal needs research. The slide deck from this presentation is available on the CFCJ website here.

  

In her recent trip to the Yukon, the CFCJ's Nicole Aylwin met with the Yukon Courts, Department of Justice, and other justice stakeholders in the Yukon to discuss the benefits of a “Human-Centered Design” (HCD) approach to civil justice reform. This approach has led to several recommendations, including the redesign of the family law statement of claim as part of the Yukon Simplified Form Innovation Project.

Nicole writes about her experience with this project in a Slaw post published here.
CFCJ Chair, Trevor Farrow presented the CFCJ's current work on the Costs of Justice to a group of international justice stakeholders and participants at the "Future Directions on Access to Justice" conference hosted by the International Development Research Centre and the Open Society Justice Initiative on 16 June 2016 in Ottawa. Also participating in the conference were CFCJ board members Mark Benton and Jerry McHale. The conference explored important issues of access, funding and the scaling of justice services in an effort to "leave no one behind".
3015 Osgoode Hall Law School York University 4700 Keele Street Toronto Ontario M3J 1P3
416 - 736 - 2100 ext 22858 communications@cfcj-fcjc.org
Canadian Forum on Civil Justice © 2013 All rights reserved