SRL for a day
Regular readers know that I occasionally provide space for guest bloggers. Here is Law Society CEO Robert G. W. Lapper on a new Law Week initiative, designed to look at the challenges faced by self-represented litigants and help us enhance access to justice.
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Yesterday, I participated in an innovative new event to mark Law Week.
“SRL for a Day,” organized by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project, gave me and several other leaders in the legal profession the chance to meet with and “shadow” self-represented litigants navigating the Family and Civil Courts at 311 Jarvis Street and at 393 University Avenue in Toronto.
It was a remarkable learning experience. I have read Professor Julie Macfarlane’s report, The National Self-Represented Litigants Project: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants, and was moved by the stories it contained, but yesterday’s experience made it that much more tangible.
Shadowing self-represented litigants and hearing their stories first-hand gave us invaluable input regarding gaps in the current system and how we could address them. Clearly, the process can be overwhelming for many.
I was extremely impressed by the number of services and support that the courts and other legal organizations provide to self-represented litigants. A former “SRL” who is now a lawyer, and a current “SRL” talked about the benefits of “litigation coaching” and the potential for that kind of service to address procedural issues that might otherwise be major obstacles for some SRLs.
Witnessing Justice Heather Katarynych’s patient and skillful guidance of unrepresented and self-represented family law litigants through case conference processes in the Ontario Court of Justice left me with both a sense of the magnitude of the challenge for both the litigants and the judiciary — and an appreciation of the extent to which the judiciary is meeting that challenge.
Clearly, there is much more to be done. Everyone in the justice sector has a role to play in making improvements to make the justice system more accessible.
This is one of the reasons why the Law Society established The Action Group on Access to Justice — or TAG — to bring together key stakeholders to build solutions.
We will take what we have learned yesterday back to TAG and work collaboratively with our justice partners to identify new ways to help self-represented litigants.