Making Connections: The Benefits of Working Holistically to Resolve People's Legal Problems - [2005] MurUEJL 5
Making Connections: the Benefits of Working Holistically to Resolve People’s Legal Problems
Liz Curran
Lecturer, La Trobe University Law School
Contents
- Introduction
- Background
- Recent Research Findings
- An Introduction to the West Heidelberg/Banyule Community Health Center/La Trobe University Model
- How the relationship with the health service works
- Conclusion
- Notes
- The recent Legal Services Research Centre findings underline the fact that it is not enough to merely provide legal services in isolation from other factors effecting people's lives and patterns of behaviour. If legal services both public and private targeted at improving access to justice and reaching people on a socio-economic income, marginalized or those likely to be discriminated against, continue to work on the assumption that these people can of their own accord navigate their way through the complex legal system then there will always be problems for them in accessing justice.
- It is the writers' view that lawyers must be more prepared to think outside the traditional frame of legal service provision and consider the situational contexts in which clients are likely to find themselves and use this information to improve access.
- There is now empirical evidence emerging from England and Wales that factors can impact upon and compound legal or 'justiciable problems' leading to entrenched difficulties and barriers to accessing justice or problem solving. The question is: are there better ways of delivering legal services through a client-centered, multi-disciplinary approach which involves the formation of improved relationships and networks with other than legal service providers which might increase the likelihood of people accessing the legal help that they need?
- The findings of the Legal Services Research Centre in the United Kingdom in their report Causes of Action,[1] present many challenges not just in the United Kingdom but in other Commonwealth jurisdictions. Its findings have some resonance in terms of finding better ways to resolve people's problems based on those people's experiences of how they navigate the legal system. This article will examine some academic literature on the delivery of integrated services and will explore some of the advantages for clients of an integrated and holistic approach to solving clients' problems in the delivery of legal services. It will also outline the working operations of the West Heidelberg Legal Service and its relationship with the Banyule Community Health Centre as an example of such an integrated/holistic approach and seek to document strategies and relationships which have developed over time to ensure the best possible outcomes for clients and the local community. It is hoped that the insights gained by operating within a multidisciplinary cooperative model may assist others in seeking to make improvements in the way that people can access the justice system.
- Much of the academic commentary on access to justice and delivery of legal services tends to work mainly within the paradigm of a focus on the lawyers working within the legal system rather than consideration of issues around access to justice from the perspective of the actual circumstances of the clients. This article is particularly concerned with those clients who are most likely to experience high levels of unmet legal need and who are likely to encounter problems gaining access to justice.[2] There seems to be either an inability or resistance to thinking outside the legal paradigm and looking at the practical situations which are likely to bring a person into the realm where they can access legal services. A good example of a radical repositioning of approach to the delivery of legal aid services is the Homelessness Clinic in Melbourne. This legal service actually goes to where the clients unlikely to access help for their legal problems are situated. Lawyers work closely with social service providers and also attend soup kitchens and walk the street side by side with the homeless, successfully building up trust and contact with homeless people who were not previously accessing traditional legal services.[3]
- This article argues for a reconsideration of how legal services are delivered which can enable better connections to be made. It is suggested that legal services through working more connectedly with non-legal contact points may find people with legal need who may not be in fact accessing legal services. In such an approach, improved community legal education of social service agencies about the legal rights of their clients is also critical, so that such agencies can add legal issues to their repertoire of what services a client may need to be linked into.
- Nothing in
this article is intended to derogate from the importance of the
offering of legal skill and expertise, rather the essential issue under
consideration is ensuring access by people to that skill and expertise
where issues of marginalisation, discrimination, lack of knowledge,
lack of empowerment or a sense of hopelessness may act as barriers for
people with genuine rights and remedies that need to be enforced. In
other words, the writer believes that lawyers and public policy makers
need to start to think outside the traditional box of legal services
and think about where the clients may find themselves and look at
making connections there. An illustration in point is found in a
discussion by Vago of the problem.[4]
In discussing, "Legal Services for
the Needy and Not So Needy" he examines attorney availability, legal
aid programs, pro bono, clinics and the more routine work done by
paralegals. He does not however consider how people are going to make
the connections with these legal services in the first place.
Background
- There is not a lot of academic writing on the concept of legal services being provided in a holistic manner within the much broader context of other service providers from different disciplines, which include health and social welfare. Much of the legal literature in Australia pertaining to "multidisciplinary practices" relates more to recent debate around the opening of joint commercial enterprises between lawyers and accountancy practices. The writer in contextualising the theory behind the provision of holistic, multi-disciplinary approaches to solving client problems therefore found herself examining the literature in other fields such as social work and public health.
- There is some discussion however around the law and its need for adaption if it is not fulfilling its full purpose. If the law is to treat everyone as equal before the law, and if its aim is to offer protection of people's human rights, to offer remedies when people are wronged and to uphold peoples rights then if a proportion of people cannot access the law or find legal help the law is in practice unable to reach people effectively. Allott states,[5] "The description we have given above of law as a communications system consisting of many parts, showed that the legal system, like any system is subject to inbuilt sources of weakness which cannot be entirely eliminated, whatever we do. Our first step is therefore, like a systems engineer, to examine the system for 'bugs' and to 'debug' it so far as possible. One must detect points of weakness in the system, faulty parts, bad connections, teeth missing from gears. If we wish to measure the effectiveness of medical treatment, we can see how far it is, as the case may be, preventative = eliminating a disease or pathogen; or curative = restoring the patient to full health and activity. We can tell if a machine is effective by seeing whether it works i.e. does the job it is designed for... the machine should be adaptable, so that it can be used in a variety of circumstances... Effective laws should generally do what they are designed to do; if some failure occurs, there should be the possibility and means of easy rectification."
- Recent studies have indicated that the laws and legal services have many problems. They show that the people most likely to have problems gaining legal assistance and participating in the legal system will be on low incomes and that other factors can also escalate their likelihood of having unmet legal needs including being from a non-English speaking background, having a disability, low literacy, gender, age, cultural differences or being poor in mental health. The 1999 Genn study[6] involved the conduct of expensive, extensive household surveys around England and Wales. It found that problems of a legal nature had a tendency to appear in clusters. Often the respondents were powerless or felt it was too traumatic to take any action.[7] The self-help process depended on the type of problem.[8] The Genn study also found that three fifths of people with justiciable problems took some form of legal advice. Genn observes that a complexity of choices can be obscured by data and how informed people are.[9] She also has found in this and ongoing studies that people use a range of sources for advice and help and at differing times.[10] The study found that the most confident people will seek legal advice.[11] This has been borne out by similar studies in Scotland (Paterson) in 2002. The findings noted that most people wanted to be rid of their problem or obtain compensation and wanted quick, cheap, stress free solutions and did not want punishment or revenge. This was true of all social groups. In addition, the study stated there was a need for knowledge about rights, remedies, procedures and responsibilities.[12] This is a very abbreviated summary of some of the Genn findings.[13]
- In
Australia, although there is a gap in uniform information about levels
of legal need, two recent reports highlight that there are problems
with access. The first is the June 2004 Senate Legal and Constitutional
References Committee Report into Legal Aid and Access to Justice. Some
key comments of the main report were:
1. A need for data and a national survey on demand for legal aid services and an assessment of unmet legal need
2. A lack of uniform access for women particularly in relation to family law
3. The need for specialist services for indigenous Australians and worries about the impact of the tendering of services
4. Difficulties in rural and regional Australia for access
5. Concern about the Commonwealth Priorities and Guidelines of 1997 which reduce legal services to migrants and refugees
Introduction