Law Times

Page 4 May 1, 2017 • Law TiMes www.lawtimesnews.com Project looks at legal needs of disadvantaged Ontarians BY ALEX ROBINSON Law Times A new study by the Can- adian Forum on Civil Justice has found that a pilot project in South- western Ontario legal clinics has successfully tapped into unmet legal needs through a commu- nity partnership approach that researchers say could eventually widely expand the reach of legal aid. Over a six-month period, 12 legal clinics participated in a pi- lot of the Legal Health Check-Up Project, which sought to identify legal needs of disadvantaged Ontarians through partnerships with community organizations. The report examined the ex- periences of the clinics over the course of the six months and found that this approach could be a better way to deliver legal aid. "Experience so far has proven that the approach works," says Ab Currie, a senior research fellow with the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, who conducted the report, called Engaging the Power of Community to Ex- pand Legal Services for Low-In- come Ontarians. ". . . It will take time to devel- op early intervention strategies to help people deal before prob- lems become more complex and solutions more limited. How- ever, the legal health checkup has taken a hard look at what we know about the legal needs of the poor and has developed an approach to legal aid that is very promising." The study said the approach "places legal aid at the centre of a network of community servi- ces that can expand the reach of legal aid beyond the boundaries of its own limited resources and capacities" and found that par- ticipating clinics that provided data substantially achieved their objectives. A legal health checkup is an outreach initiative that uses partnerships with community organizations in other fields that help recognize potential legal problems of disadvantaged people they interact with and then refer them to a legal clinic. The approach has been used in Australia and the United States. The province's Legal Health Check-up Project started at Hal- ton Community Legal Services in Oakville, Ont. in 2014. Lawyer Colleen Sym, the Halton clinic's executive direc- tor, says the clinic first started looking into such a tool a num- ber of years ago when it was hav- ing trouble meeting some of the needs of its clients because they would contact the clinic once their legal problems had become more serious. Sym says the legal health checkup project helps people learn that everyday problems they are experiencing may be legal problems. She says the project has made the work of the clinic's lawyers easier as they have been able to get involved with such problems earlier on before they become crises. If the clinic can give advice or intervene earlier on, clients often can then solve their problems on their own, she says. "We wanted a way of getting people to recognize that every- day problems, like not having enough money to pay your rent, are legal problems," she says. "We also wanted to provide that recognition and to develop a process using a tool that helped people get that insight." Sym says that in addition to not recognizing some everyday problems have legal compon- ents, people generally do not like going to lawyers. The report also found that many of the clinics in the pilot experienced that people tend to mistrust lawyers. This makes the partnerships with community agencies vital in identifying these legal needs, says Sym. The partnerships have been with a wide variety of people from food bank workers and mental health workers to even priests. Currie says that some of the directors of clinics that have adopted the approach feel that lawyers need to become more deeply involved in their clients' lives "so that they know what difficulties they're experiencing and they try to tease apart these interrelated clusters of prob- lems and either help them with them or refer them to places that might help them." Currie's study found that 1,700 people conducted legal health checkups through 90 partnerships over the six-month pilot and 45 per cent of them asked for a clinic to contact them. Of those surveyed, 75 per cent of those who went through the pilot project said the legal health checkup approach was definitely or probably helpful in assisting them identify problems and 44 per cent said they would definitely or probably would not have gone to a legal clinic with- out the pilot. The study found that the cost to Legal Aid Ontario was "not great" and that seven clinics reported they spent just a few thousand dollars on printing and operating costs. Two of the clinics spent ap- proximately $30,000 for addi- tional dedicated staff for the pilot, according to the study, but Sym says those clinics had other source funding. "The money and other re- sources expended by legal aid building the clinic–intermediary partnerships/legal health check- up model are probably more than matched by the resources contrib- uted by the intermediary partners and, over time as the approach matures, would yield a handsome return in greater access to justice," the report said. LT NEWS NEWS NEWS Ab Currie says the legal health checkup approach could widely expand the reach of legal aid. 2017 Compensation Survey SALARIES CHANGE, PARTNERSHIPS EVOLVE, LAW DEPARTMENTS GROW. Share what's happening in your organization. Complete by May 8 for a chance to win a $500 gift card. Go to canadianlawyermag.com/surveys today. 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