Comment
The Litigant in Person Support Strategy: supporting LiPs in their court system journey
Clare Carter describes the work of the Litigant in Person Support Strategy, which aims to help LiPs experience better support in their journey through the court system.
About the author
Clare Carter is programme director of the Litigant in Person Support Strategy at the Access to Justice Foundation.
In the next three years, 50% of people in England and Wales will experience a civil justice problem.¹ Many of them will not be able to pay for legal advice or representation: for example, in 80% of family cases at least one party is unrepresented. The Strategy is here to help vulnerable people to access justice in three ways:
- Providing online and self-help resources and ensuring that the right people know where they are and how to access them.
- Providing practical and emotional support.
- Providing access to free or affordable legal advice wherever possible.
Going to court without a lawyer has wide-ranging negative impacts. Nine in 10 people with experience of going through court as a litigant in person (LiP) say that it affected at least one other aspect of their life, including worsening physical and mental health, putting a strain on relationships with employers, having a negative impact on finances, and increasing stress on family relationships.²
The most recent population-wide surveys found that 43% of the population experience a civil legal issue every three years.³ This amounts to over 27m civil legal problems arising every three years.
Unresolved legal problems cost individuals and the public purse:
- 372,000 people lose their jobs, resulting in £2bn lost income;
- 1,100,000 people suffer a stress-related illness serious enough to seek medical help; and
- 250,000 relationships break down.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) economists estimate that, over a three-and-a-half-year period, unresolved law-related problems cost individuals and the public purse £13bn.4 Access to free legal advice and representation is getting more and more difficult, having a disproportionately high impact on vulnerable people, who may lose their home, income or contact with their family as a result of not being able to access the right support. The impact of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, welfare reform, and cuts to local authority funding are making access to justice increasingly challenging, especially for those with the most complex needs and the most limited means.
The good news is that there continues to be many different, inspirational individuals and organisations committing to improving access to justice, all doing important work. It is essential that this work is co-ordinated to avoid duplication and maximise limited resources. This is where the Strategy looks to assist.
[W]e provide a comprehensive framework of support to those who need it, at every stage of their journey through the legal system
The Litigant in Person Support Strategy was launched, in October 2014, in response to concerns around the increasing number of vulnerable people facing the prospect of court proceedings without advice or support. The Strategy is a collaborative project involving Law for Life, LawWorks, the Personal Support Unit (PSU), Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) Advice, the Bar Pro Bono Unit (BPBU), and the Access to Justice Foundation, funded by and in partnership with the MoJ.
We also work closely with the Civil Justice Council, HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), the advice sector, the Law Society, the Bar Council and a range of other organisations committed to access to justice. The Strategy is overseen by an independent advisory council drawn from across the legal, advice, academic and public sectors.
We are working together to ensure that our collective limited resources are focused where they are most needed. The Strategy relies on those who can self-help doing so to preserve valuable face-to-face individual help for the most vulnerable. Through the provision of quality online resources, development of support services and access to legal advice, we provide a comprehensive framework of support to those who need it, at every stage of their journey through the legal system.
Since 2014, we have worked together to improve the lives of vulnerable people facing court proceedings. Our achievements include providing resources to over one million people via the Advicenow website, supporting the provision of free legal advice to 53,000 people per annum across the LawWorks Clinics Network through pro bono advice sessions, and providing practical and emotional support to nearly 50,000 litigants in person per annum at court through the Personal Support Units (PSUs).5
As well as the impact on individuals, we have developed and implemented new ways of working with a range of partners to provide innovative solutions such as Time Together, the only court-based child contact centre in the country, and LawWorks, which sets up advice clinics in hospices and food banks. We are committed to reaching out to the wider community and working with agencies that are dealing directly with the most vulnerable people in our society.
The scope of Advicenow’s public legal information website and one-stop shop for litigants in person now provides a legal information service covering help with 350 different legal issues and, in 2016, over 1.2 million people received help with their legal problems via the site.6 It is also used widely, by advisers and support workers from across the sector, as a tool to help people resolve their problems.
CourtNav is an online tool developed by RCJ Advice in partnership with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. It is designed to help people filling in court applications. CourtNav has been rolled out across the whole Citizens Advice network (over 350 local Citizens Advice Bureaux nationwide).
The PSU provides emotional and practical support to people going to court without representation. The PSU has seen an increase of 77% in client numbers over the life of the Strategy so far.
As the Strategy develops and extends its reach, the number of people helped continues to rise. However, there is still a long way to go, with PSUs being present in a minority of courts and not yet working with HMCTS.
Where people are not able to find the support they need online, and where practical and emotional support is not enough, the Strategy is committed to ensuring that they can access affordable legal advice. This work, led by RCJ Advice and LawWorks, and supported by the BPBU, maximises the scarce resource in this area by developing and rolling-out new pro bono services, harnessing volunteering hours from across the profession to help those who need advice and assistance the most. One example of this is the Court of Appeal Scheme (COAS). This pro bono scheme was set up, within one month, to provide legal advice and representation to LiPs involved in oral hearings seeking permission to appeal.
This scheme is a collaboration between the LiP partners. The BPBU recruited barristers, and a number of law firms joined the rota. An organiser from RCJ Advice administers the scheme. COAS has 354 advocates, including 79 solicitor advocates. One hundred and twenty LiPs have used the scheme and, so far, permission to appeal oral hearings have involved 49 LiP.
Over the next 12 months, we will be working with existing and new partners:
- expanding our service delivery of self-help, support and legal advice;
- developing a collaborative online platform for interested professionals to share best practice and access to relevant resources; and
- working with key regional partners to roll out the strategy across the country.
Our work on the Strategy has really highlighted that innovation and progress in access to justice is happening everywhere. Until now, there has been no central, online platform where a wide range of people can share information. There is, consequently, a risk that developments and resources are being missed, leading to duplication or gaps.
In response, the Litigant in Person Support Strategy has developed a platform to connect those with a common goal of improving access to justice.7 This group (the Litigant in Person Network) includes the advice sector, legal professionals, academics, the judiciary, and court and tribunal staff. The Network is for professionals, rather than LiPs themselves, as other websites already exist to help members of the public directly.8
Through cross-sector networking, collaboration and shared and creative thinking, the aim is that the Network will be stronger and more effective in meeting the needs of vulnerable people. We plan to achieve this through ‘connecting’, ‘signposting’ and ‘policy engagement’ (see icons below).
The new website provides a central platform from which to disseminate information on projects, resources, research and other content relating to access to legal advice and the legal system. Material is written both by the Network and by its coordinator on behalf of the Network.
If you are short on time, we are happy to take a short telephone call and produce a blog for you. Alongside this facility, there is a private ‘noticeboard’ area, where members can post questions, make comments, and respond directly to other members.
The Network is very much a work in progress, being developed in close consultation with members and the access-to-justice sector. In the first month, we signed up over 100 new members and have focused on a wide range of issues, including online courts, referral systems, fundraising initiatives and pro bono projects.
- We are always keen to hear from new members, so please sign up at: http://www.lipnetwork.org.uk/join and become part of the conversation.
1 Lisa Wintersteiger, Legal needs, legal capability and the role of public legal education: a report by Law for Life: the Foundation for Public Legal Education, October 2015, available at: http://tinyurl.com/yb6mx29d
2 Standing alone: going to the family court without a lawyer, Citizens Advice, November 2015, available at: http://tinyurl.com/ya752ntj
3 Professor Pascoe Pleasence, Dr Nigel J Balmer and Dr Catrina Denvir, How people understand and interact with the law, available at: http://tinyurl.com/ybp7tzdo
4 Pascoe Pleasence with Nigel Balmer and Alexy Buck (Legal Services Research Centre), Causes of action: civil law and social justice, second edition, available to download at: http://tinyurl.com/y8muo227
5 Visit: http://www.advicenow.org.uk
6 See note 5
7 Visit: www.lipnetwork.org.uk
8 See, for example, note 5