All invited to International Access to Justice Forum 2022

Happy New Year!

We’re looking forward to an exciting year of research and taking you with us on the ride!

First up, our International Access to Justice Online Forum 2022 is taking place at the end of March. We’re staging it in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine School of Law’s Civil Justice Research Initiative, and if you haven’t registered yet, get on board.

It is shaping up to be an excellent event and the final program will be online very soon. The forum will run over three days and you will hear from leading experts from Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom on contemporary access to justice issues, including legal need and climate change; deregulation of the legal profession; legal need, empowerment and older people; and culturally appropriate service design and delivery.

All sessions will be held via Zoom and it’s free!

Save the dates:

• Australia: 30, 31 March and 1 April (9am – 12pm AEDT)

• United States: 29, 30 and 31 March (West Coast 3 – 6pm; East Coast 6 – 9pm).

Register now.

The third phase of the Data Mapping Project

In December we released: Smarter Data: The use and utility of administrative data in Victorian Courts and Tribunals, the second report in the Data Mapping Project.

Led by the fabulous Dr Hugh McDonald, the report maps and analyses the administrative data in Victorian courts and tribunals. If you haven’t already, please download a copy and share with your colleagues and networks – it is a tremendous piece of work!

We’re now embarking on the third phase of the Data Mapping Project, led by Dr Jozica Kutin. This phase will map the data collected by dispute and complaint resolution bodies, including what is collected about complaints lodged and outcomes.

Mapping this data will fill a significant gap in knowledge about the Victorian civil justice sector. Findings will be available later this year.

Victorian Community Legal Centres Workforce survey

We’re about to release the first reports from our Community Legal Centres Workforce Project, conducted in collaboration with the Federation of Community Legal Centres Victoria Inc.

It continues to be a privilege to work with the Federation and hear the views and experiences of many inspiring people working in the community legal sector!

The first two reports are the Workforce profile and the Technical report. The Workforce profile outlines the unique characteristics of the community legal sector workforce, while the Technical report provides a detailed description of our methodology and includes the survey instruments.

Upcoming reports cover the impact of COVID-19 on Victorian community legal centres; and the extent to which legal education is preparation for community lawyering.

Our Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS)

Last, but not least, our groundbreaking Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) is finally going into the field this month.

This is a huge step for research at the Foundation and will significantly enhance our understanding of legal need and legal capability.
Of course, COVID-19 continues to present challenges, and we are proposing adopting an innovative face-to-face and telephone interview hybrid approach to ensure as many people as possible are comfortable taking part. I look forward to reporting on progress in the next newsletter.

learn more about the PULS.

Professor Nigel J. Balmer

Research Director