Making the Justice System Balance: Beyond the Zuber Report

The civil and criminal justice systems rely on a highly individualized dispute resolution process in which each litigant must both prosecute and present his or her own case with limited intervention by the court system and no direct involvement by the judiciary. Neil Brooks has noted that the adversarial system reflects the political and economic ideology of classic English liberalism in three ways: by its emphasis upon self-interest and individual initiative; by its apparent distrust of the state; and, by the significance it attaches to the participation of the parties. Much of the current discussion of access to justice is concerned with the inequities that flow from the adversarial system along with a growing recognition that participation of parties poses particular and difficult problems. Parties with limited resources and with small or diffuse claims face the greatest difficulties, especially when they are litigating against large organizations, be they trade unions, corporations, or an arm of government

The Community Legal Clinic Quality Assurance Program: An Innovative Experience in Quality Assurance in Legal Aid

The issue of quality in the provision of legal services to low income individuals has become an area of increasing concern and investigation in a number of different jurisdictions around the world. In Ontario, this issue has been addressed, at least in part, through the implementation of a formal quality assurance program providing for regular quality monitoring and control in the province\u27s community legal clinic system. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the program, which has completed in-depth site visits at over one-third of the province\u27s 70 community clinics, has had a beneficial effect on individual clinics and the clinic system as a whole in Ontario. There exists strong support for the quality assurance program among clinics and experience shows that clinics are implementing the program\u27s recommendations as well as taking proactive steps to improve quality prior to formal reviews. Despite this success, the program has been faced with many difficult issues since its inception. These issues include the appropriateness of client file reviews, the relationship of the quality assurance program to funding decisions, and the extent to which lawyers\u27 work should be supervised within a clinic. Legal Aid Ontario, which has recently taken over responsibility of Ontario\u27s legal aid plan from the Law Society of Upper Canada, has been given a specific mandate to implement a quality assurance program for the legal aid system as a whole and will be forced to address these same issues as it implements such a program

Making the Justice System Balance: Beyond the Zuber Report

The civil and criminal justice systems rely on a highly individualized dispute resolution process in which each litigant must both prosecute and present his or her own case with limited intervention by the court system and no direct involvement by the judiciary. Neil Brooks has noted that the adversarial system reflects the political and economic ideology of classic English liberalism in three ways: by its emphasis upon self-interest and individual initiative; by its apparent distrust of the state; and, by the significance it attaches to the participation of the parties. Much of the current discussion of access to justice is concerned with the inequities that flow from the adversarial system along with a growing recognition that participation of parties poses particular and difficult problems. Parties with limited resources and with small or diffuse claims face the greatest difficulties, especially when they are litigating against large organizations, be they trade unions, corporations, or an arm of government

The Changed Legal Profession: Who Has Control of the Market for Legal Services?

During the nineteen sixties, it was provincial governments rather than lawyers or their professional societies, which determined that there would be a significant increase in the number of places for Jaw students at Canadian universities. Formula-funding programmes (in place in several provinces) along with a growing demand for law degrees stimulated government- funded universities to open their doors to students seeking a legal education and ultimately entrance to the legal profession. Prior to the late seventies, little opposition was encountered from the profession to its loss of control of the supply of lawyers. The economic recession, combined with the growth in the number of practicing lawyers, created awareness of the three fold increase in full-time places at Canadian universities for law students. T he last decade has seen stagnation in the number of Jaw students with little likelihood of further growth

Recent Trends in the Organization of Legal Services

This paper outlines the significant developments in the provision of legal services to low-income persons that have taken place since the First Congress on Civil Procedures, held in Ghent, Belgium, in August of 1977. Although only six years have passed, there have been numerous developments in various parts of the world with respect to legal services, as the legal profession the judiciary and governments have grappled with civil and criminal procedures in their attempts to make them more accessible to the poor, the unemployed and other groups which have traditionally been excluded from the legal system. This paper carries forward the analysis of Professor Vittorio Denti which was published with the Ghent national reports on this topic in Perspectives on Legal Aid - A Comparative Survey, (1979), and relies heavily on the data generated by the 26 responses to a questionnaire designed by the writer which addressed the issues of changes and developments since 1977