Legal Aid decision letters and plain language: advice for the vulnerable

Abstract

This paper responds to research on the production of decision letters sent to citizens who have applied for legal aid to Legal Aid Queensland (LAQ), the Queensland organization funded by the Federal government of Australia and the state of Queensland to help socially and financially disadvantaged people. The grants officers who generate these ‘plain-language’ letters do so using standard clauses in templates available in Technology One Limited software. The officers have no licence to individualize these letters; they merely compile them. The paper advocates changes to this unsatisfactory process and recommends that the organization be guided by current practices of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform act