Looking at Community Justice Help

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In this section we consider:

• program initiatives involving community-based not-for-profit non-lawyer provision of legal assistance or, in other words, community justice help. We begin by situating the expansion of assistance provided by not-for-profit community-based organizations, or community justice help, as an access to justice strategy;
• the spectrum of law-related assistance provided by community-based organizations;
• examples of organizations or programs that illustrate the shape and variety of community justice help, including related program evaluations, in Canada and comparative jurisdictions; and
• how community-based organizations are taking advantage of technology to improve or expand their efforts to provide community justice help.

Setting the context: community justice help as an access to justice strategy

As discussed in Section 5 of this report, much literature notes the increasing recognition of the role and importance of knowledgeable and skilled people embedded in the community, working through not-for-profit agencies, who assist people who come to them with multi-faceted problems. Those problems often include financial, health, settlement, housing, employment, family, and other matters of everyday life, some of which are serious and some less so, and some of which may involve a legal element.

In line with the varied and multifaceted nature of people’s problems for which they are seeking help, community-based workers in various occupations and professions give community-grounded assistance. This includes social workers, family advice counsellors, faith leaders, educators, library staff, settlement workers, advocates for women experiencing intimate partner violence, and many others. Sometimes these community-based helpers are called “trusted intermediaries” or “trusted helpers” due to the unique nature of their relationship with clients, characterized by trust.

For the purposes of this report, we are using the more common term, “community workers” to capture the range of professions and occupations working in these areas. These workers, employed in various occupations and professions, provide services in a range of not-for-profit settings. Not surprisingly, the types of services that community workers carry out, and the nature of the activities and tasks they perform, vary widely.

Workers at community organizations have long provided law-related assistance, but the last decade has seen an increased recognition of, and support for, this role. This increased recognition can be explained, in part, by an increased acknowledgement – by governments, legal aid providers, and other legal services providers – of the reality and extent of the access to justice crisis. Among other things, these entities have responded to the crisis by providing a greater number and range of “do-it-yourself” (or “self-help”) supports for people in the midst of a legal problem, including fillable forms, self-help guides for navigating tribunals and courts, and other resources intended to enable people to act as their own lawyer. Technological advances have assisted with the emergence of this “do-it-yourself” trend.

This “self-help” phenomenon can be characterized, in some aspects, as the increased democratization of the law: empowering people to take informed action on their own behalf. This characterization, though, is quite incomplete and thus misleading: people are “empowered” to act on their own behalf – to navigate a system that was designed for use by and for highly trained legal professionals – but are restricted in the type of help they can access when they lack the knowledge and skills to make a decision or take action on their own or, depending on the jurisdiction, with the support of a friend or family member. People who lack the personal resources or connections to help themselves – those who face various forms of disadvantage – are unlikely to be assisted by approaches that rely heavily on “self-help”.125

People can, of course, turn to the range of general legal information that is available to them, including a plethora of information now available through the Internet; and high-quality, accessible information can – and often does – give people a basic understanding of their legal rights and how to exercise them. Supported by technological advances, interactive information now provides people with more customized tools, including document preparation programs. Making use of these resources and tools turns, again, on a person’s resources, including their literacy levels (in the languages in which the information is produced) and digital access and skills.126

In this context, the importance of people struggling to address a law-related problem being able to access a “helping hand” has been well documented. In Canada and other jurisdictions, not-for-profit community-based organizations serve as this “helping hand”, playing various roles and carrying out a range of tasks as “justice partners”. These organizations do not provide assistance as a legal services provider (although they may connect people with licensed legal services), even though their support might be seen, on occasion, to be edging into what might be considered “legal services” or the “practice of law”. Whether there has been an increase in the number of community-based organizations doing this type of work, or an increase in the provision of justice-related programs or services by these organizations, is difficult to determine, given the diffuse and varied nature of not-for-profit community-based sectors.

Many if not most of these organizations receive funding from government or agencies of government that impose accountability requirements, and many organizations have staff that are subject to professional accreditation or licensing regimes (such as social workers). Most of these organizations evaluate their programs on a regular basis, even if they lack the funding and resources to retain external evaluators and conduct independent evaluations. This section brings in program evaluations where they are publicly available. Academic, empirical research that provides evaluative-type analysis relevant to this report is discussed in Section 7.

The spectrum of community justice help

Staff at community organizations provide law-related assistance and support along a spectrum, ranging from basic services that support people in identifying law-related problems and accessing sources of help, to services and tasks that support people in understanding and exercising their legal rights. The latter require greater familiarity and interaction with the law and legal processes (explaining options, assisting with process navigation, accompanying to hearing).127

The spectrum is not linear; in reality, community workers do not carry out these tasks in discrete sets. Categorizing an organization or program along the spectrum does not indicate that these are the only tasks carried out by the organization; rather, its categorization suggests the focus of an organization’s or program’s activities. For example, organizations that give more robust, individualized help (explaining options, assisting with process navigation, help with the completion of forms) also are well versed in, and give assistance relating to, legal issue spotting and warm referrals.

As noted elsewhere, it appears that hundreds of community organizations provide help with law-related problems in one way or another; in this scan, we focus on examples of organizations along the spectrum that focus on providing intentional community justice help – whether that help primarily focuses on legal issue spotting (library-justice partnerships); the intentional integration of legal services (health-justice partnerships); or more robust, individualized help.

This raises a last point. In undertaking this research, it has been difficult to discern which organizations are, in fact, providing more individualized information and robust assistance. Community organizations providing more customized, individualized help – pushing the blurry boundary between information and advice – do not describe those practices as such, at least in the public forum of the Internet. Our sense is that this is because they do not want to risk attracting the attention of regulators or funders who continue to quietly monitor the dividing line between legal information and advice. The monitoring by regulators, and others, takes place despite the absence of a body of evidence that indicates that not-for-profit community organizations generally provide “bad” help.128

In what follows, we identify and explain the spectrum of tasks and services apparent in community justice help, categorized into three broad groups.

1. Tasks and services relating to identifying legal issues, accessing legal information, and making connections to legal services

Many people with problems relating to work, housing, or family matters do not realize that their problem has a legal element. In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of people with law-related problems being able to identify them as such.129 Unless a person is able to understand that their problem involves a “legal right” (or “legal responsibility”) that is enforceable by law, they are unable to understand or take advantage of the options and remedies available to them under the law.130

Many legal organizations now train or provide guidance to community workers on how to help a client identify the legal element of a problem, how to identify and find legal information that they can point a client to, and how to give good referrals to local, accessible legal services. Public libraries, for example, have increasingly recognized that helping library patrons identify the legal element of their problem is a task that they are often asked to perform, and library-justice partnerships have emerged to meet this need, as discussed in Section 6.3.1 below.

In many jurisdictions, not-for-profit organizations have also built connections with local, accessible legal services providers so that they can connect their clients to those services as seamlessly as possible.131 Community-justice partnerships have emerged in recent years, reflecting an intentional commitment by frontline organizations to offer integrated or “joined-up” services. In these partnerships, frontline organizations help their patrons or clients identify their legal issue, access relevant information, and seamlessly connect with accessible legal services.132 These community-justice partnerships typically involve legal experts conducting training to help build the knowledge and skills of frontline organization staff so that they are better equipped to spot legal issues, give relevant information, and provide warm referrals.133

2. Tasks and services to assist with navigating processes, understanding options, completing forms

Many community organizations, however, do more than help clients identify the nature of their law-related problems, access relevant information, and access expert legal services; they help them understand their problem, what legal rights they may have, the options that are available to them, and how to take next steps, including navigating a legal or court process. They may also help them complete a government form, or a form needed in a tribunal or court proceeding.

This type of assistance, while not new, has been gaining increasing attention and recognition in recent years. The fact that many Canadians are unable to access licensed legal services providers for help with their law-related problems,134 and the extent and vitality of the not-for-profit service sector in many communities throughout Canada, have no doubt contributed to this increased recognition.

The nature, depth, and breadth of the law-related assistance that community workers are providing to their communities depends on a number of factors including, importantly, the availability of accessible services135 from legal professionals in the community. At a more micro level, the nature, depth, and breadth of the assistance relate to the mandate and priorities of the community organization, and the resources it has available to devote to its various priorities.

3. Tasks and services to provide support, including mentoring and moral support, support in organizing documents, and accompaniment to meetings and adjudicative proceedings (for example, arbitration hearings, tribunal, or court)

Community organizations also respond to the demand for law-related assistance from members of their communities who are engaged in a legal process through programs and services that focus on providing moral and emotional support, support in organizing documents and evidence, and accompaniment services, where the support person accompanies someone with a legal problem to a meeting or hearing. Many of the services described above also include one or more of these elements.

Surveying examples of community justice help

As noted above, numerous community-based organizations carry out tasks and provide services in one or more of the service areas outlined above. In what follows, we highlight community-based organizations that are carrying out this work, in Canada,136 the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. While there is no basis upon which to quantify the extent of these programs, we speculate that there are many hundreds of examples across the country of community-based organizations providing some of these law-related services.

Each of the groupings below has seen considerable, and increasing, activity in the realm of community justice help in recent years. We focus on community workers in the not-for-profit sector, but we also briefly mention other programs when they have some bearing on the emergence of community justice help.

1. Community-justice partnerships: services relating to identifying legal issues, accessing legal information, and making connections to legal services
   1. Library-justice partnerships (Can, Aus, US)
   2. Health-justice partnerships (Can, US, Aus, England and Wales)
   3. Faith-justice partnerships (US)
   4. Cross-sectoral partnerships (Can)
2. Community services that integrate law-related assistance: services to assist with navigating processes, understanding options, and completing forms
   1. Workers’ rights support (Can, US)
   2. Support for recent immigrants (Can, US)
   3. Support for survivors of intimate partner violence (Can)
   4. Navigators and community guides (US, Can, England and Wales)
3. McKenzie Friends and court support persons (UK, Can): services to provide moral support and document organizing support, and accompaniment services
4. Another model: Citizens Advice (UK)

Community-justice partnerships

Many jurisdictions, in Canada and in other countries, have seen the emergence of partnerships between not-for-profit community-based organizations and legal organizations, or groups of lawyers. Various forms of informal collaboration between community-based organizations and lawyers have existed for many years and continue to flourish.

It appears that, in recent years, many of these collaborations have become more formal, with identified goals, deliverables, and evaluation plans: they are more intentional. Sometimes, the partnerships focus on training activities, and primarily serve to build the knowledge and skills of community workers to help their clients identify legal issues and give them relevant legal information and referrals to accessible legal services. Other partnerships go further, offering “joined-up” services: these partnerships enable people who are seeking help with a law-related problem from a community worker to be connected, seamlessly, with a lawyer who can help them address their problem. These partnerships may involve pro bono lawyers or other associations of lawyers.

Below we discuss these more formal community-justice partnerships in four areas: library-justice partnerships, health-justice partnerships, faith-justice partnerships, and cross-sectoral partnerships.137

Library-justice partnerships (Can, Aus, US)

One form of partnership that has emerged is between public libraries – including some law libraries that serve the general public – and legal organizations or groups of legal professionals. These library-justice partnerships are premised on the recognition that many people go to public libraries to find information to help them address their law-related problems.138

These partnerships often focus on training public library staff on how to spot legal issues – a challenge when law-related elements are buried in a multifaceted problem – and how to find and access reliable and relevant legal information. When a library staff has the knowledge and skills to help a patron understand that they have a problem that may have a legal response, they can point to relevant legal information and give them good referrals to local, accessible legal services.139

A major initiative – LawMatters – is an early example of a partnership between public libraries and a law-related organization. This initiative is a partnership between Courthouse Libraries BC, which runs the LawMatters program, and public libraries across BC. Since its creation in 2007, LawMatters staff have provided training, on an ongoing basis, to more than 70 public libraries across the province. The training includes segments on identifying legal issues and accessing relevant, up-to-date legal information resources.140Public libraries in rural and remote parts of the province – one of the few sources of expert help in a region – are often called on to provide more robust help, and LawMatters supports those efforts.141

In Ontario, community legal clinics regularly partner with local public libraries to support the libraries’ efforts in helping people who come to them looking for information relating to their law-related problem. For example, the Community Advocacy & Legal Centre (CALC) in Belleville led a multi-partner initiative involving several public libraries to support the needs of the public libraries in the area.143

More recently, and building on the CALC initiative, Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO) worked with the Southern Ontario Library Service, an association of public libraries in southern Ontario, to develop an eight-week online course to train staff at public libraries on several topics relating to the law. The course requires participants to complete interactive quizzes and exercises and is facilitated by a skilled instructor who gives feedback on the participants’ work. Participants who complete the course receive a “Legal Information and Referral Specialist” certificate upon completion.144

Other provinces have long seen partnerships between law-related organizations – often the primary public legal education and information organization in the province – and public libraries.145 A recent initiative in Saskatchewan enables self-represented litigants who need legal information or help with research to consult with a Law Society of Saskatchewan librarian through Zoom appointments during set hours, or by phone or email, in a partnership with the Saskatoon Public Library.146

Library-justice partnerships have also sprung up in other countries. For example, Victoria Legal Aid, in Australia, runs a Public Law Library, where librarians assist patrons in locating legislation, case law and other legal material.147 In the US, a law librarian from the Minnesota State Law Library visits a branch of the St. Paul Public Library twice a month to meet with library patrons who need legal information, connecting them to resources “already available to them in a way that makes things easier.”148 In California, a law librarian service called AskNow enables people looking for legal resources to ask questions through a live chat function and a similar service also exists in Massachusetts.149 A broader training initiative for librarians that is part of a project aiming to improve access to civil justice through public libraries has been launched, based on a partnership between the Legal Services Commission and a US-based global library cooperative (OCLC).150

Health-justice partnerships (Canada, US, Australia, England and Wales)

Health-justice partnerships, also referred to as medical-legal partnerships, have emerged in the last decade in Canada and comparative jurisdictions as models of joined-up services. Health-justice partnerships recognize that a person’s resources and circumstances – the security and level of their income, housing, and employment, or “the social determinants of health” – have a direct impact on their health, and that many people rely on “the law” to secure or maintain decent living and working conditions.151 Health-justice partnerships have emerged hand-in-hand with the growing recognition of the critical importance of the social determinants of health.152

Health-justice partnerships, like library-justice partnerships, focus on training and supporting health care workers to help patients identify legal issues and access relevant legal information. But, significantly, health-justice partnerships have gone beyond this; many offer some form of warm referrals and some have integrated legal services directly into the health care setting.

Some health-justice partnerships may simply provide a lawyer on staff who can offer some form of triage, robust legal information, or summary legal advice to patients and families in a health care setting. Deeper initiatives involve integrated partnerships between health care offices and legal aid clinics, law school clinics, or other not-for-profit law-related legal service providers.

These innovative partnerships reflect the notion of “joined-up” services, in which the health care professional is able to help a patient identify a legal issue – often a legal entitlement to a benefit (such as government income support relating to a disability) – and connect the patient in a seamless way to an expert legal professional, either a staff lawyer or a warm referral.

Canada

In Ontario, Pro Bono Ontario (PBO) as well as a number of community legal clinics have led the way in setting up these partnerships. (Our research did not uncover health-justice partnerships in other Canadian provinces, although it is likely that they exist.) A scan of health-justice partnerships recently conducted by the Community Advocacy & Legal Centre (CALC) has identified 33 Ontario-based partnerships involving eight community legal clinics, PBO, and Legal Aid Ontario.153 Depending on the locations, health care partners range from hospitals, community health centres, family health teams, addiction and mental health support services, and one nurse practitioner. These clinic-led partnerships are intended to respond to specific local conditions and needs; they vary considerably in the extent of formality and collaboration.

In addition to more traditional lawyering tasks, legal partners in these health-justice partnerships train health care workers on areas of law affecting marginalized patients, detecting health (and life) problems with a legal component, and giving referrals to legal clinics and other legal services providers. The partnerships may also arrange for a lawyer to be available for urgent consultations with health care workers.

An example of an early health-justice partnership is rooted in a high-needs downtown Toronto area.156 Until recently,157 the partnership between St. Michael’s Hospital and local community legal clinics involved an embedded staff lawyer who provided legal information, referrals, and brief services directly to patients living on low incomes.158 The staff lawyer also delivered training sessions to a large group of hospital clinicians.

Pro Bono Ontario (PBO), an early leader in Ontario’s health-justice partnerships, has triage lawyers embedded at all five children’s hospitals in Ontario, in partnership with hospital foundations.159 The PBO lawyers train hospital clinicians on how to identify legal issues that may harm patient health or a family’s ability to manage their child’s medical care, and they help keep clinicians updated on changes to the law.160

Innovative practices as well as promising practices are emerging in Ontario as this work progresses. For example, health-justice partnerships helped to prompt the development of the “legal health checklist”, a tool used by many organizations to help staff uncover legal issues that might otherwise be buried in other problems, recognizing the importance of addressing legal issues before they escalate.162

United States

According to the US National Centre for Medical-Legal Partnerships website, there are presently more than 440 medical-legal partnership projects in operation across 48 US states.163 This website also provides numerous reports and guides for organizations wishing to set up their own health-justice initiatives.164

According to the National Centre website, “a few health organizations directly employ attorneys to address patients’ health-harming social needs. The vast majority partner with a local legal services agency or academic legal clinic in their community. Several of these legal organizations partner with multiple health organizations to provide medical-legal partnership services”.165

Australia

The health-justice partnership movement has also been very robust across Australia. A survey conducted by Health Justice Australia in 2018 indicated that there were at least 73 projects in operation across the country, and that this seems to be a growing movement.167 These partnerships have seen legal help embedded into health care services and teams for the purpose of improving health and wellbeing for individuals (through direct service provision), communities vulnerable to complex needs (by integrating services around their needs and capabilities), and vulnerable populations (through advocacy for systemic change to policies and practices).168 A key component to health and justice work in Australia involves training by lawyers of health care staff on issues such as family violence and spotting legal issues.169

For example, the Loddon Campaspe Community Legal Centre and the Bendigo Community Health Services formed a health-justice partnership in 2014 to better reach vulnerable clients who were less likely to get legal help to resolve their legal problems.170 Health professionals are trained as intermediaries in identifying legal issues that may arise for their clients and can consult about their clients’ legal issues with a lawyer (both on-site and off-site).

England and Wales

In England and Wales, there has also been wide recognition that health-justice partnerships are well placed to deliver law-related assistance where and when people might need it most.

One 2018 report identified more than 380 services providing “social welfare advice” in health care settings. The majority of these partnerships involved embedding legal services at health care sites or sending legal workers to health care sites for regular drop-in hours, while other partnerships relied on link workers, navigators, or other intermediaries.173

For example, the Great Yarmouth and Waveney social prescribing service was a two-year project that aimed to provide non-medical sources of support more directly to patients in primary medical care.174 Through this service, non-medical partners came directly to medical “surgeries”, or offices, to provide support, including legal advice, to patients.

Faith-justice partnerships (US)

Very recently, the US has seen a number of partnerships that offer members of faith-based or religious groups or institutions, or people who attend particular places of worship, direct connections with legal professionals. The North Carolina Faith and Justice Alliance175 and the Tennessee Faith and Justice Alliance176 are two examples of initiatives that aim to connect people who live on low incomes, and are involved with local faith-based institutions, with free legal expertise available at or through the faith-based institution.

Cross-sectoral partnership (Canada)

Ontario is also home to an innovative, cross-sectoral partnership in Ottawa. Connecting Ottawa is a partnership-based network of over 50 community health, legal, immigration, disability, and social services agencies in the Ottawa region.177 Led by Community Legal Services of Ottawa, a community legal clinic, the partnership aims to increase access to justice for linguistic minorities, people who are not proficient in English or French, and those with communication challenges due to a disability or sensory impairment.

Connecting Ottawa supports frontline workers in numerous community partner agencies in giving useful and accurate law-related information to their clients and facilitates connections to other services and resources.178 It facilitates a range of training programs for partner agencies to build their law-related knowledge and skills. Connecting Ottawa has two lawyers on staff who are available and mobile to advise frontline workers on law-related cases they are handling.179

Community services with integrated law-related assistance

As noted earlier, numerous organizations in Canada, and in other countries that are part of this review, offer services to specific communities that integrate, as part of their services, robust, individualized assistance with law-related problems. The assistance may involve:

• discussion and guidance about the law that may apply;
• options for addressing the problem;
• navigating the legal and court process;
• identifying the relevant court or tribunal forms, and help with completing forms; and
• speaking on someone’s behalf or accompanying them to a meeting with an employer, landlord, or family member.

Although there is a lack of hard evidence on the extent to which this type of assistance is available across Canada and elsewhere, it is likely that it is integrated into the work of many of the hundreds of community-based not-for-profit organizations that currently exist. Not-for-profits in some sectors are more likely than others to provide assistance with law-related problems, due to their organizational mandate; some organizations have mandates that focus on communities whose lives are likely to intersect with the law. Examples include people experiencing work-related problems, recent immigrants, and survivors of gender-based intimate partner violence.

In recent years, some jurisdictions have benefitted from the establishment of centralized funding programs for the embedding of community-based support workers or advocates providing services in a particular subject matter area or for particular communities. These funding programs typically offer opportunities for community-based organizations to apply for funding to retain and support specifically-mandated advocates, “support persons” or navigators. These programs have a specific focus, and often include some form of centralized support, such as regular training and mentoring. Typically, community organizations apply to host such a position, and receive accompanying funding, at their organization.

Canada’s Indigenous Courtwork Program is an early example of a centralized funding program – in this case, the federal government – that supports embedded advocates.185 BC’s Advocates Program, funded and supported by BC’s Law Foundation, has existed for many years.186 More recent examples are Ontario’s Family Court Support Worker Program (discussed below), funded by the Ontario government and supported by Luke’s Place,187 and Illinois’ Community Navigators Program (also discussed below), operated through Illinois Access to Justice, which in turn is funded by the Illinois state government.

In what follows, we give examples of programs, in Canada188 and elsewhere, whose services to specific communities integrate assistance with law-related problems.

Workers’ rights support (Canada, US)

Many grassroots, community-based organizations support workers in their efforts to achieve fair, decent, and safe conditions of work, and to access benefits in the event of injury, disability, or unemployment. These organizations, many with historic roots in labour rights activism and labour unions, are typically led by the community and engage in community organizing and advocacy as key tools in advancing their goals. Because their efforts are grounded in the power of worker-led action, these organizations have often been at the forefront of advocating for the legal rights of their members, both collectively and on an individual basis, undeterred by the absence of lawyers on staff.

Le Mouvement Action-Chômage (MAC), a Montreal-based workers’ rights organization, was formed in the 1970s at a time of rising unemployment; it was one of the first workers’ rights organizations established in Canada.189 The MAC helps workers navigate employment insurance processes, providing individual consultations as well as presenting information sessions led by social workers.190

The Community Unemployed Help Centre (CUHC) in Manitoba was established in 1980,191 based on the MAC model. The provides information, assistance, advice, and representation free of charge to individuals navigating the processes relating to employment insurance and other income assistance. Staff are specialized experts in the area of employment benefits; they are not lawyers and do not work under the supervision of lawyers.192 CUHC staff represent workers in appeal hearings on their claims, including researching the case, applying case law and government policy, and either representing or preparing the client for the appeal.193 The CUHC also helps self-represented litigants assess the merits of their cases.194

In Regina and Saskatoon, the Unemployed Workers Help Centre provides similar services, with their non-lawyer staff offering information and advocacy services relating to workers’ claims for employment insurance. This includes communicating, explaining and mediating the employment insurance process, preparing claimants, providing representation for appeals, and providing referrals to other help.195

In Alberta, caseworkers at the Workers’ Resource Centre help people access a variety of employment-related benefits and entitlements through public education and advocacy and serve as agents representing their clients in small claims court proceedings.197

Ontario’s Workers’ Action Centre (WAC) supports workers engaged in low-wage and precarious work. In addition to advocating for labour law reform, WAC provides a Workers’ Rights Information PhoneLine that offers information to workers about their rights and helps them identify strategies to resolve their issues. They also hold support clinics to provide information and one-on-one support on workplace issues. WAC also offers workers’ rights workshops and training sessions for frontline workers who assist community members with their workplace problems.198

The United States has a multitude of workers’ rights organizations that, similar to Canada’s, are led by community members and rely on community organizing and advocacy as key tools. Many are rooted in immigrant communities. The law-related assistance provided by these organizations often extends beyond workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights. Pro bono lawyers or legal aid offices in the community may assist with some of the provision of legal support.

Two examples in just one state, Texas, among numerous similar organizations in the state, give an indication of the range of community work in this area. La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) in south Texas’ Rio Grande Valley carries out work that ranges from “fighting deportations, to providing social services and English classes, to organizing for streetlights and drainage”.199

And, in Houston, Texas, the Faith and Justice Worker Center serves low-wage workers through research, case resolution services, peer-support networks and advocacy campaigns.200 Recognizing a spectrum of exploitation in workplaces across the greater Houston area,201 the Center has “worker empowerment counselling staff” who work with pro bono lawyers to help low-income and under-served immigrant workers gain legal status and work authorizations through its Community Consultation Legal Center.202 The Center also helps workers recover unpaid wages in court.203

Support for recent immigrants (Canada, US)

People who have recently arrived in a new country are often enmeshed in efforts to obtain legal status, permission to work or study, health care, and other legal documentation and entitlements they need to enable them to remain and live decently. A range of organizations in Canada and other countries support newcomers in achieving these often-daunting goals.

In Toronto, for example, refugees and others at risk due to their immigration status get help from trained workers at the FCJ Refugee Centre.204 The Centre’s services include explaining the refugee process to clients, helping clients fill out forms and make applications relating to their status, supporting them in gathering evidence, and organizing translation and interpretation. These services are provided by lawyers (who train volunteers and law students, provide pro bono work, and monitor and review the work of law students), case workers, coordinators, students, and volunteers. The Centre also provides refugee hearing orientation sessions,205 and other training, seminars, workshops, and publications.

In Montreal, Services Communautaires pour Réfugies et Immigrants (SCRI) provide a range of services to help immigrants settle in Quebec.206 SCRI provides assistance to immigrants in finding housing and jobs, learning a language (French, English, and Spanish), and setting up a small business. SCRI’s services include a legal clinic, a collaborative project with McGill University, which provides free legal help to refugees who are seeking work permits and permanent resident status.207

At the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, social workers help people navigate complex systems, including the legal system, the health care system, and child services. The Centre also provides programs and services to integrate newcomers into the local community, find employment, access counselling, and acquire English language skills.208

In Prince Edward Island, the PEI Association for Newcomers to Canada (PEIANC) offers settlement services to help newcomers access information about immigration status, arrange appointments with immigration officers, apply for and obtain Canadian documents, and register for available government programs and services.209 PEIANC also provides assistance with obtaining new work permits and information on employment law for temporary foreign workers.210

The Multicultural and Immigrant Services Association of North Vancouver Island runs the Immigration Welcome Centre in Campbell River, British Columbia. The Centre provides free services for international newcomers in areas such as help with processing immigration forms and documents, and refugee protection support.211

In the United States, the Recognition and Accreditation Program allows non-lawyers at recognized not-for-profit organizations to represent people at immigration hearings as “accredited representatives”.212 The purpose of the Program is to increase the availability of competent immigration legal representation for people living on low incomes.213 Not-for-profit organizations must apply to the Program to be “recognized”; recognized organizations are allowed to practise immigration law through their accredited representative.214 The organization must demonstrate that it provides immigration legal services primarily to low-income and indigent clients within the United States.215

The organization must apply on behalf of the non-lawyer staff member for them to become an accredited representative; the organization must demonstrate that the person has “broad knowledge and adequate experience in immigration law and procedure”, which must include at least one formal course on the fundamentals of immigration law, procedure and practice.216 According to one report, “over 2000 federally accredited non-lawyer immigration representatives are employed by approved non-profit organizations across the country that deploy these non-lawyer services in dealing with legal matters faced by their clients”.217

Support for survivors of intimate partner violence (Canada)

Survivors of intimate partner violence, in the process of extricating themselves from an abusive relationship, are likely to have to engage with various legal processes, including processes relating to criminal law (restraining orders, for example); family law (child custody or support, possession of matrimonial home, for example); housing law (renting a new place to live, for example); and income support. A range of community-based organizations in Canada, the US,218 and other jurisdictions support survivors of intimate partner violence in their interactions with the law – usually as part of their other support services, such as safety planning.

In Ontario’s Durham region, Family Court Support Workers at Luke’s Place help women who have been subjected to abuse and their families in navigating the family law process. Services for women include accompanying them to court and lawyer appointments, providing education to women about court processes and how to complete legal documents, connecting women to family law lawyers for free summary legal advice, and providing family law information workshops. Luke’s Place also offers training and resources for court support workers embedded in other organizations, who support abused women navigating the family court process, through the Family Court Support Worker Program.219

A number of Ontario organizations serve French-speaking women who are experiencing or have survived intimate partner violence. Many of these organizations are members of an association that supports their work: Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes (Action ontarienne).220 Among other activities, Action ontarienne provides support and training to Francophone organizations in Ontario that have legal or court support workers.221

An example of such an organization is the Centre juridique pour femmes de l’Ontario, which has legal support workers who help women experiencing violence understand the law-related elements of their case.222 The Centre also has a summary legal advice service, provided by lawyers.223

Other community organizations in Canada also provide advocacy and court accompaniment services for survivors of intimate partner violence, such as the Family Violence Prevention Services in Prince Edward Island.224 In British Columbia, the Cowichan Women Against Violence Society provides support to women and children affected by abuse, including support from the Poverty Law Advocate who provides information on navigating systems relating to income security, debt issues, tenant rights, income assistance, disabilities, workers’ compensation, and employment standards.225

Navigators and community guides (US, Canada, England and Wales, Australia)

In recent years, navigator programs have emerged to provide process-related assistance to people engaged in a legal matter. “Navigator” is a term that is now often used to describe people who have been trained to help people understand and work through a court or tribunal process.226 Community-based organizations that provide law-related assistance to their clients frequently integrate navigation support into their work, even though they may not describe the program or staff as navigators.

Navigator programs in courts and tribunals

The United States has seen an increasing number of programs, in courts and tribunals, that provide navigator-type assistance to people walking through their doors who are not represented by a lawyer or paralegal (often called “self-represented litigants”). Court-based navigator programs usually require that the navigators – often volunteers – undergo training. Depending on the program, navigators carry out a range of activities, often explaining a court process or identifying relevant forms, and sometimes assisting with the completion of a form. Programs sponsored by courts or tribunals are typically overseen by lawyers.

In the US, there are at least 23 programs in over 15 states that offer court-based navigators.227 These navigators provide direct person-to-person, same-day assistance to self-represented litigants.228 The navigators are neither lawyers nor court staff but are trained to provide a range of support: they help self-represented litigants physically navigate the courts, obtain legal and procedural information, understand their options, complete court paperwork, and get referral information. They are careful not to provide legal advice.229 Navigators are also able to accompany self-represented litigants to court proceedings.

Responding to cuts to legal aid and the closure of many Citizens Advice offices, a charity in the UK – Support Through Court – has been created to provide court-based assistance to people who are unrepresented. Support Through Court relies on trained volunteers to provide support to people with civil and family law problems in 20 courts in England and Wales. Volunteers provide “emotional and practical support through the court process, explaining what happens in court, assisting with the completion of legal forms, and helping people plan what they want to say in court”.232

Canada’s Social Security Tribunal recently launched a navigator program233 to assist people with appeals before the tribunal who are not represented by lawyers. Navigators are tribunal staff who have received specialized training on how to guide people through the appeal process; they are not lawyers.234 Navigators give one-on-one guidance throughout the appeals process235 and answer questions about preparing for hearings and how hearings work.236 Navigators do not provide legal advice, act as advocates or representatives, or accompany people to hearings.237

The Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia (LISNS) offers a variety of navigator programs to assist people using LISNS web-based apps. The navigators are community volunteers and students from a variety of disciplines who receive online training. The navigators generally do not have legal backgrounds.238 Small Claims Court Navigators assist self-represented litigants with using the LISNS Small Claims Court App in preparing for Small Claims Court, including gathering evidence, filling forms, and accessing legal information. They can also assist with attending at Small Claims Court hearings with the self-represented litigants to offer support.239

Navigators do not draft documents or speak on behalf of a litigant in court; rather, they are meant to build confidence.240 Navigators provide assistance by telephone to seniors who require assistance with using the LISNS applications to make a personal directive, will, or power of attorney. LISNS has an online matching platform where people looking for navigator help can automatically be matched with a navigator.241

In British Columbia, teams at Justice Access Centres are available in Nanaimo, Surrey, Vancouver, and Victoria to help people access legal information, and to refer them to services and resources including self-help information services, dispute resolution and mediation options, community resources, and legal services. Justice Access Centres are funded by the provincial Ministry of the Attorney General, and are provided by the Ministry and partner agencies, including Mediate BC Society,242 Legal Aid BC,243 Family Maintenance Enforcement Program,244 Credit Counselling Society,245 and BC’s Access Pro Bono Society. These Centres provide help with family and civil law issues such as income security, employment, housing, debt, and separation or divorce, but do not deal with criminal law or Small Claims Court.246

Navigator programs in community-based organizations

Community-based organizations have begun to adopt the “navigator” terminology to describe the process-oriented assistance that they provide. In these community-based programs, navigators provide a range of process-focused, law-related assistance. They are expected to remain within the confines of providing legal information but are not typically overseen by a lawyer in the office.

Community navigator programs are beginning to emerge in communities in the United States.252 Illinois’ Community Navigators Program, supported by Illinois Access to Justice and the Illinois state government, provides funding to community organizations to train, coordinate, and deploy community navigators in communities impacted by incarceration and by immigration policies. The volunteer navigators are tasked with educating, connecting, and supporting community members.253 They provide public education workshops, accompany clients from marginalized communities to court cases or meetings with government agencies, and help them prepare court documents.254 All community navigators are trained in the “unauthorized practice of law”. In the first six months of 2020, 600 community members were trained as community navigators.255 After COVID-19 hit, 916 emergency community navigators were also trained to share information and resources with the hardest hit community areas, including information about rights to health care and COVID-19 treatment and testing, as well as travel rights and restrictions.256

Community guides and peer educators

Many organizations providing community justice help include peer-to-peer support as one feature of the services they provide. Recently, more dedicated initiatives focus on training people to serve as “community guides” and “peer educators” – members of communities who are trained to support other people within the community; community guides and peer educators provide trusted, accessible support to people who are often the most marginalized.

Australia is the home of several initiatives that rely on trained community guides and peer educators, particularly in marginalized communities, to share legal information with their peers.257 These initiatives are based on the premise that people are likely to turn to friends and family within their own community – that is, trusted and accepted peers with similar experiences or backgrounds – to discuss their legal problems. The initiatives train and equip peer educators to provide accurate and reliable information about the law to others within their community.258

For example, Footscray Community Legal Centre trained community guides to help their peers in the newcomer and refugee community to address legal issues in areas such as family law, consumer contracts and police powers.259 Similarly, the Legal Aid Commission in Australia trained community guides from the Karen and Bhutanese refugee communities to support their peers in providing legal information and referrals in areas such as police, consumer, housing, employment and family issues.260

McKenzie Friends and court support persons

(UK, Canada)

Some organizations offer support services to their clients, which may include offering moral and emotional support, assistance and guidance in organizing documents and evidence, and information about the legal and court process and adjudicative forum. Staff from an organization may accompany a person who is engaged in a legal process (often a self-represented litigant) to a meeting with lawyers, or to a court, tribunal, or other proceeding.

The concept of support persons has gained attention in Canada in recent years, building on the existence of McKenzie Friends in the UK. The UK allows for a layperson, known as a “McKenzie Friend”, to provide “reasonable assistance” to litigants in court. The vast majority of McKenzie Friends in the UK do not charge for their assistance, but a few do.261

McKenzie Friends in the UK are permitted to provide moral support for the litigant, take notes, help with case papers, and quietly give advice on any aspect of the conduct of the case. Practice guidance documents have strived to distinguish this role from that of a barrister; McKenzie Friends are not permitted to conduct litigation, act as the litigant’s agent, manage the case outside court (such as by signing court documents), or exercise a right of audience by addressing the court or examining witnesses (unless authorized by the court in very exceptional circumstances).262

Assistance that is similar to McKenzie Friends exists in Canada but, in some parts of the country, there is confusion about their role, and in many places, their role is left to the discretion of judges.265 Section 4 briefly identifies some of the applicable rules and approaches in various provinces relating to McKenzie Friends and court support persons who may accompany parties to adjudicative proceedings.

Many community organizations in Canada that give law-related assistance also provide what might be considered “McKenzie Friend-type” assistance. For example, the Community Unemployed Help Centre, the Unemployed Workers Help Centre, Luke’s Place, court-based navigators in the US, and Illinois’ Community Navigators, all discussed above, include accompaniment in their roster of services.

Another model: Citizens Advice

In England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (UK), an extensive network of independent charities, called “Citizens Advice” (offices or bureaux), are entry points for many people who need assistance and support on a wide range of issues that frequently arise in people’s lives – issues relating to benefits and pensions, debt and consumer matters, employment, housing, immigration, and numerous other matters.266 Advisors working out of local Citizens Advice provide information about processes, help clients communicate with the institutions they are dealing with, translate their stories to meet the requirements of claim forms or tribunals, negotiate informally with employers,267 and gather evidence to support their claims.268

Citizens Advice provide independent and confidential assistance – or advice269 – to people one-on-one. Assistance from Citizens Advice, largely provided by volunteers, is not means-tested, is provided free of charge, and is delivered in person as well as via telephone advice lines and live chat. Citizens Advice work in collaboration with other local social services agencies in their geographic areas. Canada, the US, and Australia do not offer similar countrywide entry point services, available to the general public.270

Looking specifically at England and Wales, the 270 Citizens Advice rely on a total of almost 21,000 volunteers and over 6,000 local staff to provide advice.271 The volunteers are highly trained; according to one report:

It takes nine months to turn a new volunteer into an adviser: an extensive (usually six-month) training programme and then a period of observation before being allowed to take on casework.272

Typically, volunteer staff provide “generalist” advice, often supported by salaried, specialist advisors who provide oversight in the “backroom” of the Citizens Advice.273 Citizens Advice also provides helplines for their advisors to ensure they are able to provide accurate and up-to-date advice.274

Citizens Advice are part of the ecosystem of publicly-supported legal assistance available in England and Wales, and indeed, across the UK, which includes legal aid. Key components of that system are Law Centres, independent not-for-profits supported by government funding; some Citizens Advice receive legal aid funding as Law Centres and provide specialist legal services.275 Similar to community legal clinics in Ontario, Law Centres provide specialist legal services in “social welfare” law to people who cannot afford a lawyer. Law Centres, and legal aid in general in the UK, have undergone substantial cuts over the last several years, and many Law Centres have closed their doors. The legal aid cuts have also had a major impact on Citizens Advice, many of which had to close, cut their services (sometimes replacing a salaried person with a volunteer), or saw an increased demand for their services.276

Local Citizens Advice are members of national associations – one for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland; and another for Scotland – that provide resources and support for the local training of volunteers. The national associations also set and maintain standards, conducting regular audits of casework. A system for recording data on clients’ inquiries, “enables Citizens Advice to draw upon data from the several million clients they see annually to identify changing trends in the advice needs of the population and launch policy campaigns based upon them. The data provides unique and unrivalled evidence of shifting societal needs, data that is particularly powerful in a climate that puts considerable weight on evidence backed up by big numbers”.277

The use of technology to support community justice help

Community organizations providing community justice help often turn to technology-based resources and tools to support their work, and this section briefly reviews some of the ways in which they do so. Although there is a lack of formal literature on this specific topic, our research has identified several examples of community organizations taking advantage of technology-based tools to expand, improve, or otherwise support their provision of community justice help.

In this part, we focus our attention on the ways in which technology has played a positive role for the provision of community justice help, that is, in the form of online platforms, tools and channels for information sharing and service support; in the form of training; and in the form of mentoring and peer support, and referrals support. We include a few examples of initiatives or programs that have made strategic use of technology to support their provision of community justice help.

Online platforms, tools, and channels

Many community-based organizations – with the notable exception of very small organizations, and organizations working in rural and remote communities – use a variety of online resources, tools, and forums to learn about or keep current on the law. They look to websites they trust, including aggregator or portal-type sites;283 sign up to email subscription lists, email list servers284 and blogs;285 join online community forums;286 and participate in social media platforms (such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter)287 to share and spread information about the law.

Organizations providing community justice help, and whose mandates include supporting other organizations in their field, use many of these tools and channels to “push out” information about the law to their partner organizations. And many province-based public legal education and information organizations use these online tools and channels to share updates on the law with community-based organizations.

Training and courses

Technology also plays a significant role in supporting training and professional development for community justice help. This role has recently intensified with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Technology is used to enable online real-time participation in webinars and educational events. It is also used to provide and access on-demand educational resources. Spurred by the pandemic, resource and event developers are increasingly exploring the use of interactive tools for virtual live and on-demand education so as to enhance the technology-based learning experience and to maintain and foster the role of educational gatherings in promoting communities of practice.

In terms of substance, with the growth in recognition of the role of community justice helpers, resource and event developers have responded with offerings that seek to build and support relevant knowledge and skills. For example, CLEO developed a suite of educational modules specifically for staff in public libraries to assist them in responding to inquiries about law-related issues. The modules address the nature and sources of legal information, techniques for spotting a legal issue, and resources and techniques for effective referrals.288

Similarly, as direct-to-public technology-enabled resources and tools expand and are publicly accessible on a no-fee basis, online training is being designed and delivered to community workers to support them with the specific task of helping their clients to use direct-to-public technology-based tools, such as guided pathways.

Mentoring and peer support, and referrals support

Another important role for technology in relation to community justice help is in facilitating mentoring, peer-to-peer support, and communities of practice among community justice helpers and with other service providers, including other providers of law-related assistance, as well as supporting inter-agency referral and service integration.

Mentoring and peer support

PovNet is an online community of poverty law advocates in BC, including community workers and pro bono lawyers. PovNet aims to enhance the capacity of poverty law advocates to assist their clients with administrative law problems.289

PovNet was an early innovator in the strategic use of technology, using technology and digital activism since it was first established in 1997. Poverty law advocates who are members of PovNet use discussion boards to communicate and share ideas and strategies. Starting in 2004, PovNet has been providing online training for frontline workers through its PovNetU training network.290

Luke’s Place, the organization mentioned earlier that provides a range of assistance to women who have been subjected to intimate partner violence, offers another example of a technology-driven initiative that supports workers giving community justice help. Luke’s Place provides training, resources, and other supports to Family Court Support Workers (FCSWs) embedded in local community organizations across Ontario. FCSWs provide support to survivors of intimate partner violence who are involved in the family court process.291

Luke’s Place uses technology in a number of different ways to augment and support its services, including its hosting of an online community of practice for FCSWs to communicate with and learn from each other.292

The community of practice, facilitated by Luke’s place, is set up as a discussion board in Moodle and includes three categories of activity:

• a “What’s New”, which includes weekly updates on relevant issues, including updates on the law and practice directions, and upcoming events and training;
• a moderated online discussion forum, divided into topic areas, that enables FCSWs to ask questions, share information, brainstorm, and give support to each other – it also enables Luke’s Place legal director to give guidance; and
• • a continually renewed resources section, on which Luke’s Place shares new resources it has created (about a dozen each year) that address developments in the sector and in the law and respond to FCSW needs.293

Referrals and service integration

Community agency networks in two Ontario communities, working collaboratively, offer an example of how community organizations can leverage technology to support people, particularly those who are marginalized, with their law-related problems.

In 2011 and 2012, agencies in northern Simcoe County294 and in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood came together, in their respective communities, for the purpose of coordinating and improving the law-related assistance they were providing to their (respective) shared client groups. More specifically, each network of agencies decided to work together to ensure that, once a client sought support – law-related, social services or other – from one of their agencies, that client would, in fact, be connected with responsive, relevant assistance at other agencies in the network. Problems relating to clients slipping through the cracks and referral fatigue would be minimized.295

Both groups of agencies set up technology-based inter-agency referral systems, using an online interactive platform to support frontline workers who were serving the same community, but at different agencies. The agency that first saw a client completed a brief online survey of the client’s situation and needs, helping to identify legal issues. With the client’s consent, the agency then used the platform to electronically refer the client to all the other agencies whose services the client might require, including the community legal clinic.

As a party to a common consent, these agencies then shared information and coordinated services. If a client did not attend at an agency, others in the information loop followed up if they made contact with that client. The local community legal clinic, in addition to being part of the network, acted as the data steward, hosting the software and associated data for the rest of the network.

These technology-based referral networks operated in these communities for a number of years. They ceased to operate when resources and support for the centralized platform ran out of funding. Anecdotal accounts indicate that the approach was promising, though challenging to implement.296

Looking at community justice help: summing up

A large number of not-for-profit community-based organizations – in Canada, the United States, the UK, and Australia – provide assistance to people who come to them with problems that may include a legal element. The mandates of these organizations, and the nature of the services they provide, vary widely. Noting that it is virtually impossible to neatly categorize the range of organizations and the services they provide, we decided to illustrate the range by selecting and briefly discussing a sampling of programs in these jurisdictions.

Although most organizations assess or evaluate their programs periodically, many (if not most) lack the resources to conduct independent, formal evaluations. We referenced program evaluations, for the programs we give as examples, where they are publicly available.

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