Technology and Access to Justice

As part of our Legal Innovation Lab Wales Summer Week of Events, on 23rd June 2021 we hosted the panel: Technology and Access to Justice

Technology will change our lives overall during the next decade. We can already see how important it has been in keeping legal services going during the pandemic. Businesses and not for profit providers have responded valiantly to the remote working forced on them by Covid 19. Courts and tribunals, already in the midst of digital transition programme, have rapidly gone online. As we have some hope of coming out of the worst of the pandemic, this is an opportunity:

• to assess what has happened so far around the world in terms of digital services;

• to analyse the main forces at work in accelerating or holding back further digitalisation;

• to place global developments within the specific context of what might be relevant to Wales;

• to link developments in technology to their surrounding political and professional context;

• to arrive at a series of recommendations that will maximise the beneficial impact of technology.

Speakers:

Chair – Professor Richard Owen – Swansea University

Roger Smith OBE

Natalie Byrom – The Legal Education Foundation

Karen Taylor – Rhondda Cynon Taff Citizen’s Advice

Dr Sarah Nason – Bangor University

Roger spoke for half an hour and leave an equivalent amount of time for questions and discussion. His presentation roamed the globe from the outreach work through zoom of the People’s Law School in British Columbia, to the pro bono referral package developed by JusticeConnect in Australia (and taken up by LawWorks in England); from HelloDivorce, an innovative US divorce service combining automated, digital and individual elements, to recognition of the major upgrade given by CitizensAdvice to its digital presence. Up for discussion was the performance of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service whose own permanent state of sunny optimism on its modernisation programme contrasts so clearly with the pessimism of most practitioners. And, as Wales ponders on how to develop a distinctive approach to publicly funded legal services, how might it wish to distinguish itself on technology from a legal aid scheme in its neighbours - England where legal aid has been in retreat since 2012 - and Scotland - where a separate legal aid administration with a wide brief and relatively comprehensive approach has survived? What choices and what lessons await?