Legal Needs Surveys and Access to Justice

212 Pages·2019·8.736 MB·English

by  Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development., OECD, Open Society Foundations

Legal Needs Surveys
and Access to Justice
L
e
g
a
l N
e
e
d
s
S
u
r
v
e
y
s
a
n
d
A
c
c
e
s
s
t
o
J
u
s
t
ic
e

Legal Needs Surveys
and Access to Justice
This work is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The
opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official
views of the member countries of the OECD or the Open Society Foundations.
This document, as well as any data and any map included herein, are without prejudice
to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international
frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.
Please cite this publication as:
OECD/Open Society Foundations (2019), Legal Needs Surveys and Access to Justice, OECD Publishing,
Paris.
https://doi.org/10.1787/g2g9a36c-en
ISBN 978-92-64-30952-4 (print)
ISBN 978-92-64-30953-1 (pdf)
ISBN 978-92-64-30954-8 (HTML)
ISBN 978-92-64-30955-5 (epub)
The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of
such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in
the West Bank under the terms of international law.
Photo credits: Cover © Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center,
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov.
Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found on line at: www.oecd.org/about/publishing/corrigenda.htm.
© OECD and Open Society Foundations 2019
You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and
multimedia products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable
acknowledgement of OECD as source and copyright owner is given. All requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should
be submitted to [email protected]. Requests for permission to photocopy portions of this material for public or commercial use shall be
addressed directly to the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) at [email protected] or the Centre français d’exploitation du droit de copie
(CFC) at [email protected].
FOREWORD │ 3

Foreword
Access to justice and legal empowerment are foundational values of intrinsic importance
that are also crucial for achieving inclusive and sustainable growth. Governments and
civil society organisations (CSOs) alike recognise access to justice as both a fundamental
right and a means of guaranteeing opportunities for all. Without it, the most vulnerable
groups and people are left behind.
People and businesses regularly face “legal problems”; difficulties in addressing these
civil and administrative issues may have significant impact on their ability to participate
fully in the economy and society, as well as on their productivity, and relationships. Yet,
tools and indicators to measure access to justice are under-developed. While research and
measurement methodologies exist for the criminal justice sector, they are less developed
in areas of civil justice.
In 2016 the Open Society Justice Initiative (”the Justice Initiative”) and the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), under the auspices of its Public
Governance Committee, joined forces to support a better understanding of justice needs
and promote effective access to justice and legal empowerment. To do so, our institutions
convened representatives from OECD member and partner countries from various links
of the justice chain as well CSO and academic experts.
This Guide on Legal Needs Surveys and Access to Justice is a result of these efforts. The
Guide brings together the experience gained through more than 55 national surveys
conducted by governments and civil society organisations in more than 30 jurisdictions in
the last 25 years. The approach to legal needs surveys detailed in the Guide reflects a
wide array of legal traditions and political and cultural environments, as it has benefitted
from measurement initiatives in Korea, Nepal, South Africa, Ukraine and other countries.
The Guide provides a framework for understanding and measuring legal needs as well as
methodological guidance and model questions to capture three core components of
effective access to justice:
1. The nature and extent of unmet legal and justice needs;
2. The impact of unmet legal and justice needs on individuals, the community and
the state; and
3. How specific models of legal assistance and dispute resolution are utilised to meet
needs.
The Guide seeks to support countries in better understanding, measuring and gauging
their progress in implementing people-centred legal and justice services. It is also
designed to support the effective implementation of target 16.3 of the 2030 Agenda (“to
promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and to ensure equal access
to justice for all’) and the OECD Policy Framework for Policy Action on Inclusive
Growth.
LEGAL NEEDS SURVEYS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE © OECD AND OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 2019
4 │ FOREWORD

Finally, the Guide puts forward the concept of a legal needs-based indicator that focuses
on access to civil justice. In doing so, it contributes to the work of Praia City Group on
Governance Statistics (established by the United Nations Statistical Commission), whose
goal is to “encourage countries to produce governance statistics based on sound and
documented methodologies and to address the conceptualisation, methodology and
instruments needed to produce such statistics.”
It is our hope that this pioneering exercise will help us improve access to justice.
Understanding people’s justice experiences and needs will help countries deliver more
effective public policies, not only in the area of justice and legal empowerment, but also
in sectors such as health, housing, employment, education.

Marcos Bonturi
James Goldston
Director
Executive Director
Public Governance Directorate
Open Society Justice Initiative
Organisation for Economic
Open Society Foundations
Cooperation and Development
LEGAL NEEDS SURVEYS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE © OECD AND OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 2019
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS │ 5

Acknowledgements
The Guide is a joint production of the Open Society Justice Initiative (“the Justice
Initiative”) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
under synergy work on people-focused approaches to measurement of access to justice.
The form and content benefitted from inputs provided by the OECD Public Governance
Directorate under the direction of Marcos Bonturi and by the Open Society Foundations’
Justice Initiative under the direction of James Goldston and Zaza Namoradze. The OECD
work on Equal Access to Justice is led by Tatyana Teplova, Head of Unit, Gender and
Justice for Inclusiveness, OECD Public Governance Directorate; coordinated by
Chloé Lelievre, Policy Analyst and; under the guidance of Martin Forst, Head of
Division, Governance Reviews and Partnerships. The document also draws on the input
from Marco Mira d’Ercole, Head of Division, Household Statistics and Progress
Measurement. Numerous Justice Initiative staff contributed to the development of this
Guide including David Berry, Senior Communications Officer, Matthew Burnett, Policy
Officer, Sumaiya Islam, Senior Program Manager, Zaza Namoradze, Director of the
Justice Initiative’s Berlin Office and Robert O. Varenik, Director of Programs.
Principal authors of the Guide are Professors Pascoe Pleasence and Nigel Balmer,
Co-directors of the Centre for Empirical Legal Studies, University College London, with
additional content provided by Peter Chapman, Senior Policy Officer, Justice Initiative.
Special thanks are due to the advisory stream of country and expert stakeholders who
provided valuable inputs. These include:
1. Statistics South Africa (Raphael Kasonga, Solly Molayi and Isabel Schmidt)
2. Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, Argentina (Gustavo Maurino)
3. Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales, Australia (Geoff Mulherin)
4. Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Cabo Verde (Celso Soares)
5. Departamento Nacional de Planeación, Colombia (Eduardo Freire Delgado,
Manuel Felipe Diaz Rangel)
6. Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) (Martin Gramatikov)
7. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, Mexico (Adrian Franco Barrios)
8. United Nations Development Programme (Aparna Basnyat and Alexandra Wilde)
9. Department of Justice, United States (Allen Beck)
10. World Bank (Paul Prettitore and Bilal Siddiqi)
11. World Justice Project (Alejandro Ponce and Sarah Chamness Long)
In particular, comments and details were provided by authors and expert in the field of
legal needs surveys, including Cleber Alvez, Public Defender, State of Rio de Janeiro;
LEGAL NEEDS SURVEYS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE © OECD AND OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 2019
6 │ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ab Currie, Canadian Forum on Civil Justice; Hazel Genn, University College London;
Gillian Hadfield, University of Toronto; Kuo-Chang Huang, Academia Sinica; Masayuki
Murayama, Meiji University; Shruthi Naik; Alan Paterson, University of Strathclyde;
Rebecca L. Sandefur, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Marijke ter Voert,
Ministry of Justice, The Netherlands; and Jan Winczorek, University of Warsaw.
Numerous representatives from national governmental and civil society organisations also
provided valuable feedback on the approach and content of this document, including
colleagues from Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines,
Sierra Leone, South Africa, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Colleagues in Korea,
Nepal and South Africa experimented with the legal needs methodology presented in the
Guide.
Editorial and logistical assistance was made possible by Charlotte Dubald,
Roxana Glavanov, Amelia Godber, Myron Manns, Andrea Uhrhammer, Martyna Wanat,
Cicely Dupont-Nivore, Lyndon Thompson, Andrew Esson, Meral Gedik and Eleonore
Morena.
LEGAL NEEDS SURVEYS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE © OECD AND OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS │ 7

Table of contents
Foreword ................................................................................................................................................ 3
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ 5
Executive summary ............................................................................................................................. 11
Why legal needs surveys? .................................................................................................................. 11
A framework for conducting legal needs surveys .............................................................................. 12
Towards meaningful access to justice indicators ............................................................................... 12
Overview of legal needs surveys and access to justice ...................................................................... 15
Inclusive development and access to justice ...................................................................................... 15
Purpose of this document ................................................................................................................... 18
Structure of this document ................................................................................................................. 19
Notes .................................................................................................................................................. 20
References .......................................................................................................................................... 21
Chapter 1. Access to Justice and Legal Needs Surveys .................................................................... 23
Defining access to justice and legal needs ......................................................................................... 24
Understanding the dimensions of access to justice and legal needs .................................................. 24
What are legal needs surveys? ........................................................................................................... 25
Why conduct legal needs surveys? .................................................................................................... 28
Limits of legal needs surveys ............................................................................................................. 30
What have we learned from legal needs surveys? ............................................................................. 31
Impacts of legal needs surveys .......................................................................................................... 37
Target populations and methodological variations among past legal needs surveys ......................... 39
Notes .................................................................................................................................................. 41
References .......................................................................................................................................... 49
Chapter 2. Framework for Conducting Legal Needs Surveys ........................................................ 57
Legal needs surveys in context .......................................................................................................... 58
“Justiciable” problems ....................................................................................................................... 58
Problem seriousness ........................................................................................................................... 68
Units of measurement ........................................................................................................................ 70
Legal needs survey reference periods ................................................................................................ 71
Problem resolving behaviour ............................................................................................................. 72
Process ............................................................................................................................................... 78
Whether and how justiciable problems have concluded .................................................................... 81
Perceptions of process and outcome .................................................................................................. 82
The cost of resolving justiciable problems ........................................................................................ 84
Legal capability and legal empowerment .......................................................................................... 86
Measuring legal need and unmet legal need ...................................................................................... 87
Consistency of approach and the comparability of legal needs survey findings ............................... 90
LEGAL NEEDS SURVEYS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE © OECD AND OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 2019
8 │ TABLE OF CONTENTS

A framework for asking questions: survey structure ......................................................................... 91
Notes .................................................................................................................................................. 95
References ........................................................................................................................................ 100
Chapter 3. Model Questions, Model Structure and Short-Form Illustrative Questionnaire ..... 105
Model core legal needs survey questions ......................................................................................... 106
Beyond core questions ..................................................................................................................... 123
From questions to questionnaire ...................................................................................................... 125
Notes ................................................................................................................................................ 136
References ........................................................................................................................................ 139
Chapter 4. Legal Needs Surveys and Access to Justice Indicators ............................................... 141
Multidimensionality of access to justice .......................................................................................... 142
Principles for defining access to justice indicators .......................................................................... 144
Using legal needs-based access to justice indicators ....................................................................... 149
The path ahead ................................................................................................................................. 155
Notes ................................................................................................................................................ 156
References ........................................................................................................................................ 157
Annex A. Annotated Model Core Legal Needs Survey Questions ................................................ 159
Annex B. Illustrative Longer-Form Legal Needs Survey Questionnaire ..................................... 173
Annex C. Topics included in Legal Needs Surveys to date ............................................................ 195

Tables
Table 1.1. National legal needs surveys conducted in the last 25 years (to 31 December 2017) .......... 26
Table 1.2. Legal needs survey modules within larger national surveys ................................................ 28
Table 1.3. Utility of legal needs surveys ............................................................................................... 30
Table 2.1. Illustrative standard problem categories for legal needs surveys ......................................... 63
Table 2.2. Illustrative standard sources of help categories for legal needs surveys .............................. 74
Table 2.3. Illustrative standard process categories for legal needs surveys .......................................... 79
Table 3.1. Example categories with forms of presentation and illustrative examples......................... 108
Table 3.2. Problems concerning business and crime ........................................................................... 109
Table 3.3. Illustrative short-form legal needs survey questionnaire .................................................... 129
Table 4.1. Access to justice dimensions and relevant data sources ..................................................... 146
Table 4.2. Compound indicator dimensions & corresponding questionnaire numbers ....................... 152

Table B.1. Illustrative longer-form legal needs survey questionnaire ................................................. 174

Figures
Figure 1. Components of justice system ................................................................................................ 17
Figure 1.1. Vicious cycle involving justiciable and wider socioeconomic problems............................ 33
Figure 2.1. Logic tree for proxy measurement of legal need and unmet legal need .............................. 89
Figure 2.2. Compatible category data at different levels of detail......................................................... 91
Figure 2.3. Example legal needs survey data structure ......................................................................... 92
Figure 2.4. Model legal needs survey questionnaire structure .............................................................. 93

Figure A.1. Model problem identification question ............................................................................ 159
LEGAL NEEDS SURVEYS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE © OECD AND OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 2019