The Needs of Helping Organizations in the Community - Ab Currie, Ph.D.

In phase II of the legal health check-up project, within a 6-month period, 12 clinics in Southwestern Ontario developed partnerships with 125 community organizations to act as intermediaries, using the legal health check-up tool to carry out the gateway intermediary functions of problem spotting and making good referrals.3 The legal secondary consultation project emerged as an extension of the leg. [...] 3 Legal secondary consultation (LSC) is a form of outreach that was piloted in 3 Southwestern Ontario community clinics and has since become an ongoing part of the suite of service delivery approaches in each of the clinics.5 LSC invites helping organizations in the community to request assistance from the legal clinic to help them to assist their own clients or members of their constituency. [...] The data were gathered from a case file review of 83 cases in 2 of the 3 clinics that determined the type of assistance provided in response to requests for consultation.8 The case file review revealed that in clinic B, legal advice (advice about the legal position in a specific individual matter) was provided in 4 of 42 cases (9.5%), in each case in combination with strategic advice (general advi. [...] Access to justice has historically been a project of the legal profession, although as the meaning of justice and access to justice and understandings of the nature of legal problems change, the center of gravity of clinic – community arrangements may be shifting away from a legal clinic- centric to a more balanced collaborative model. [...] The refocusing on providing resolutions rather than legal advice and the increasing role of organizations that are part of the social organization of helping in communities may change the ecology of access to justice and in doing so expand access to justice.