From the frying pan to the fire: The impact of businesses' legal problems

Among LAW Survey respondents, 2,611 people (13%) described themselves as business owners. These business owners reported 984 business-related legal problems, 65 per cent of which resulted in adverse consequences (e.g. loss of income, illness or relationship breakdown). This not only impacted on business and the Australian economy, but also on business owners’ private lives and their families. Providing timely and integrated legal assistance services to business owners has the potential to mitigate the impact of problems not just on businesses and the wider Australian economy, but also on private and family life

The Legal Problems of Renters: Findings from How People Understand and Interact with the Law

At the time of the 2011 Census, 8.3 million (or 36 per cent) of households in England and Wales were rented. Thus, the ability of individual citizens to resolve legal problems related to rented housing is a matter of broad societal importance. Looking at the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS), renting housing problems were reported by 4 per cent of first wave respondents, 3 per cent of second wave respondents, and accounted for 7 per cent of all ‘justiciable problems’ across both waves. Looking at just respondents who rented their home, problem prevalence rose to 10 per cent. As detailed elsewhere, rented housing problems are far from uniformly distributed across those who live in rented accommodation. They are more common for particular population groups, reflecting the ‘social patterning’ of legal problems (Pleasence, Balmer & Denvir, 2015). For example, the youngest survey respondents reported more such problems than others, as also did lone parents and cohabitants with children. Rented housing problems were reported to have often lasted a long time, with almost half of all problems still ongoing after twelve months and more than a quarter still ongoing after two years. Thus, their impact is felt both widely and deeply

In need of advice: how business owners respond to legal problems

Business owners sought advice to resolve business-related legal problems more often than other LAW Survey respondents. They also made greater use of legal advisers, financial advisers and trade/professional association advisers than individuals. Yet we know that business-related legal problems routinely result in adverse consequences and frequently co-occur with other legal problems. A legal needs survey dedicated to business owners would provide guidance on the delivery of legal assistance services to this group

On the brink: how business owners experience business-related and other legal problems

New analysis of LAW Survey data has identified three distinct groups among business owners according to their likelihood of experiencing business-related and other types of legal problems ‒ ‘normal’, ‘highly elevated’ and ‘extreme’. As is the case with individuals, a relatively small proportion of business owners account for the bulk of problems. Targeted legal assistance services are needed for this group

Development of a General Legal Confidence Scale: A First Implementation of the Rasch Measurement Model in Empirical Legal Studies

Legal capability has long been of evident importance in our understanding of legal problem resolution behavior. Although legal capability remains a contested concept, there is much commonality between specifications. Some aspects are generic, while others—such as legal confidence—are particular to law. Such law‐specific measures as have been developed to date have been developed in an ad‐hoc fashion; with no attempts made to test psychometric properties, using either classical test theory or modern psychometric methods. This has been a shortcoming in the empirical legal field, weakening theoretical development and precluding reliable estimation of changes in levels of legal capability over time. In this article, we set out details of a study aimed at introducing new methods to scale development in the field of empirical legal studies based on the approaches that have evolved in other fields and the latest developments in psychometric modeling. Specifically, we set out details of the use of a specially designed item pool—based on an increasingly demanding legal scenario—and Rasch analysis to develop a general legal confidence scale. Once the 12 item pool items were reduced to a final set of six, this yielded a scale with good psychometric properties: a General Legal Confidence (GLC) Scale. The scale showed good overall fit, item fit, person fit, targeting, and internal consistency. All items had ordered thresholds, there was no response dependence, items were unidimensional, and there was no evidence of differential item functioning. The GLC scale constitutes an effective measure of general legal confidence, and demonstrates it is possible to arrive at robust and coherent law‐specific measures of legal capability through the careful design of questions and application of the latest psychometric modeling techniques

Health Professionals as Rights Advisers: Rights Advice and Primary Healthcare Services

BACKGROUND: Evidence of associations between social problems and morbidity supports a broad approach to service provision in general practice. Some social problems linked with morbidity involve people’s rights. They can be mitigated through the provision of advice about people’s rights. Without advice, people are often in a poor position to make informed decisions about how to best address such problems. Objectives: This study explores the current scale of involvement by doctors and other health professionals in the provision of advice about problems involving rights. METHODS: The study is based on an in-depth random national survey of 5,015 adults. The survey explored people’s experience of and the strategies employed to resolve problems involving rights. It documented the extent to which people sought advice from doctors and other health professionals about such problems. RESULTS: Health professionals provided advice in relation to 6 per cent of problems about which advice was obtained. The figure was 2 per cent even when problems centring upon, or reported to have led to, ill-health were discounted. Some respondents characterised the advice offered by health professionals as ‘legal’, and one respondent reported being advised to commence legal proceedings. CONCLUSIONS: Questions are raised about the skills, awareness and training of professionals who provide rights advice, about the role of rights advice in primary healthcare settings and about arrangements for the provision of advice to patients facing problems involving legal rights. It is suggested that the provision of outreach rights advice services in general practice settings, particularly in fields such as welfare law, represents a constructive measure that can be expected to promote both justice and health outcomes

When legal rights are not a reality: Do individuals know their rights and how can we tell?

Public knowledge of rights has been the subject of a number of empirical enquiries over the last decade. In England and Wales, knowledge of rights and its relationship with an individual's capacity to 'self-help' and 'self-represent' when faced with a civil justice problem has become the subject of renewed attention following changes to legal aid which, from March 2013, will see the availability of legal advice and representation dramatically reduced. Previous studies focusing on public knowledge of rights in this (and other) jurisdictions have illustrated a lack of knowledge amongst the general population and more specifically, a widespread tendency of individuals to assume that the law aligns with their own moral, ethical or social attitudes. However, many of these studies have also suffered from methodological shortcomings. In attempting to address some of these shortcomings this study uses an open-ended format to ask individuals with one or one or more civil or social justice problems to describe their rights/legal position. We find that whilst an open-ended question approach to exploring knowledge of rights yields insight not acquired by other formats, its utility is constrained by difficulty reconciling articulation and actual knowledge of rights. We discuss the implications of these findings as they relate to the development of future research in the field of family and social welfare law, Public Legal Education (PLE) and access to justice post-March 2013. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Apples and Oranges: An International Comparison of the Public's Experience of Justiciable Problems and the Methodological Issues Affecting Comparative Study

Since the mid-1990s, at least 28 large-scale national surveys of the public's experience of justiciable problems have been conducted in at least 15 separate jurisdictions, reflecting widespread legal aid reform activity. While the majority of these surveys take their structure from Genn's Paths to Justice survey (1999), they vary significantly in length, scope, mode of administration, types of problems included, survey reference period, data structure, data analysis, and question formulation. This article draws on surveys from across the world, contrasting their methodologies, comparing their headline findings, and setting out the potential for bias as a consequence of methodological variation. The article also presents findings from five online experiments testing the impact of various question formulations on problem prevalence, use of advice, and formal processes. Specifically, the experiments test whether varying the reference period, describing problems as “legal,” offering detailed as opposed to simple problem descriptions, and describing problems as “difficult to solve” had an impact on reported prevalence of justiciable problems, and whether presenting lists as opposed to a series of individual questions had an impact on reported use of advice and processes. The experiments demonstrated that modest differences in question formulation yield significantly different results. Specifically, alteration of survey reference period did not result in a proportional change in reported problem prevalence, introducing problems as either “legal” or “difficult to solve” significantly reduced reported prevalence, and introducing use of advice/processes as multiple questions rather than as lists significantly increased reported use. The risks involved in comparative analysis (and particularly in looking beyond methodology when attempting to explain jurisdictional variation) are discussed. In relation to future studies, the importance of understanding the impact of methodological change, learning the lessons of the past, making technical details transparent, and making data available are highlighted

Navigating the Legal Advice Maze – Knowledge, Expectations and the Reality of Advice Seeking

As law has become increasingly ubiquitous in modern life, the sources of help to deal with an increasing range of legal issues have become more fragmented and complex. Yet, despite the ubiquity of law and scale of the (broadly defined) legal services sector, there is evidence in England and Wales that public awareness of even the most prominent services is limited. How is it that people navigate the legal advice maze? What does this mean for the development of the law, legal services and access to justice? In this paper we build on the existing literature, using data from both waves of the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS) to explore public awareness of legal services, the characteristics associated with greater/lesser knowledge of advice services, as well as what it is that consumers of legal services want from their advisors. In confirming that levels of awareness of legal services are relatively low, and that the accuracy of the public’s understanding of the types of issue that different services can help with is wanting, our findings point to the need for legal services to convey more effectively the support they can offer. Even those services that figure prominently in the public’s consciousness have work to do in more accurately targeting their services and more effectively promoting access to justice

Children, young people and requests for police station legal advice: 25 years on from PACE

Informed by data extracted from 30,921 police electronic custody records, drawn from 44 police stations across four police force areas and including 5153 records of juveniles aged 10 to 17 years, this article examines the take-up of legal advice by children and young people in police stations in England and Wales. There are wide variations in the extent to which juveniles request and receive legal advice when compared to adults but also between juveniles of different ages. Such variations are explored both in relation to the age of detainees and the type and seriousness of offence and case disposal. Also examined are variations based on different police force areas. The implications emanating from children’s differential access to legal advice at police stations are considered in relation to children’s rights