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Author: John-Paul Boyd

John-Paul Boyd is the executive director of the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, a non-profit organization associated with the University of Calgary. The main work of the Institute involves undertaking research related to law and the family, public legal education, promoting evidence-based law and policy reform, and improving access to justice. John-Paul practiced family law in Vancouver, British Columbia for thirteen years before joining the Institute. He took his training as a mediator in 2005, his training as a parenting coordinator in 2007 and 2008, his training as an arbitrator in 2011 and his training as a collaborative practitioner in 2012. John-Paul has particular interests in law and process reform, children's rights and involvement in the justice system, the conflicts of laws and jurisdictional issues in general, heuristics and decision-making processes, and the psychology of separation and divorce.

The Vicious Spiral of Self-Representation in Family Law Proceedings

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On September 10, 2014

In Access to Justice, Family

Written by: John-Paul Boyd

PDF Version: The Vicious Spiral of Self-Representation in Family Law Proceedings

A lot of good research on litigants without counsel has been published in the last three years, most notably, in my view, Julie Macfarlane‘s Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Self-represented Litigants, a trio of papers published by the Canadian Research Institute on Law and the Family on the views of Alberta judges and family law lawyers, and a report by the Canadian Research Institute on Law and the Family with professors Nicholas Bala and Rachel Birnbaum (in press) on the results of a national survey of judges and lawyers. Although this research doesn’t necessarily label it as such, I’ve noticed that there’s a bit of a slippery slope effect to litigating without counsel, in which the decision to self-represent, whether a choice was involved or not, seems to trigger a cascade of adverse effects that ultimately result in litigants without counsel achieving worse results in every major area of family law than would have been achieved with counsel.

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Access to Justice: The DIY Index

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On August 28, 2014

In Access to Justice

By: John-Paul Boyd

Editor’s Note: John-Paul Boyd, the Executive Director of the U of C-affiliated Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family (CRILF), started a new blog in August on Access to Justice in Canada. John-Paul will be cross-posting on ABlawg from time to time and blogging on family law decisions (see also his blog JP Boyd on Family Law). This first post is an index to five separate entries on DIY access to justice approaches originally posted on Access to Justice in Canada.

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DIY #1: Write and share plain-language information on the law

Prepare and distribute handouts with clear information about the law and dispute resolution processes. Handouts could cover topics including the substantive law on different issues, management of common litigation tasks and tips for successful mediation. Leave them in a brochure rack in your reception area; give copies to colleagues and to pro bono and community legal clinics; give them to social service providers such as abused women’s centres and immigrant settlement agencies.

DIY #2: Work with others and other’s work

Connect with a few of the social service agencies in your neighbourhood, find out where the holes are in their library of legal resources, and fill them. Think and write about the law in a way that addresses the unique legal needs and realities of each group’s target population. Work with community media and larger social service groups; these generally have a broader reach and better funding, and the work you do often goes much further.

DIY #3: Talk to your community

Get in touch with the libraries, community centres and social service groups in your area and arrange to provide one or more public lectures; public talks are a rewarding, enriching and engaging way of improving access to justice. The range of topics you can address is unlimited and could include introductions to court processes, alternatives to court, landlord tenant law, wills and estates, the basics of family law, and anything else that could of interest to the people you are talking to. Providing handouts gives the community group and the people at your talk an additional resource.

DIY #4: Unbundle your services, reinvent your billing model

Working on an unbundled basis is a great way to maintain a remunerative practice while offering legal services that are more accessible than services offered on a comprehensive, billable-hour basis, however few lawyers offer such services. Unbundling gives clients the services they select on fixed or predictable prince and within a defined time period; it gives lawyers a less stressful practice with a lower likelihood of mounting accounts receivable.

DIY #5: Do more work on a flat rate basis

Offering services on a flat rate basis is another way to maintain a profitable practice while improving access to justice. Under this model, the client can pick and choose which and how much of a lawyer’s services he or she will buy, at a fixed rate which is determined up front. The client and the lawyer are protected from the client’s frustration if a legal issue is not resolved before his or her resources are exhausted. The lawyer gets a file with a fixed scope of required labour and a minimal potential of becoming a dog file, payment up front and a minimal likelihood of collections issues, and a file free from the tyranny of recording time.

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