Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6564
Sarah J Runyon
This article is a sequel to Correctional Afterthought, in which the author argued that Gladue’s promise of reducing Indigenous over-incarceration by employing non-custodial measures has been thwarted. By insisting on alternatives to incarceration, the justice system is forced to rely on administrative court orders managed by provincial probation services. The judiciary and justice system participants possess a misplaced faith in the probationary regime, which functions as a repressive system of control that necessarily views the Indigenous accused as a risk that must be managed. The most common probation conditions, far from fostering reintegration, serve to erode individual autonomy, engender mistrust, alienation, resentment, and resistance; in the end creating disunity and discord. The aim of Effectuating Change is to offer a sound proposal for legislative reform and in the interim, practical sentencing solutions to deliver the true intention of Gladue and its offspring. Regardless of whether the proposals in this article are vigorously critiqued, supported, denounced or modified the hope is that they create a springboard for creative solutions to the problems identified in Correctional Afterthought.
{"title":"Effectuating Change: A Tool Box of Strategies for Reducing the Unnecessary Use of Administrative Court Orders","authors":"Sarah J Runyon","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6564","url":null,"abstract":"This article is a sequel to Correctional Afterthought, in which the author argued that Gladue’s promise of reducing Indigenous over-incarceration by employing non-custodial measures has been thwarted. By insisting on alternatives to incarceration, the justice system is forced to rely on administrative court orders managed by provincial probation services. The judiciary and justice system participants possess a misplaced faith in the probationary regime, which functions as a repressive system of control that necessarily views the Indigenous accused as a risk that must be managed. The most common probation conditions, far from fostering reintegration, serve to erode individual autonomy, engender mistrust, alienation, resentment, and resistance; in the end creating disunity and discord. The aim of Effectuating Change is to offer a sound proposal for legislative reform and in the interim, practical sentencing solutions to deliver the true intention of Gladue and its offspring. Regardless of whether the proposals in this article are vigorously critiqued, supported, denounced or modified the hope is that they create a springboard for creative solutions to the problems identified in Correctional Afterthought.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46796161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6562
Magnus Manhart
The moment asylum seekers arrive in Greece, they are often denied access to justice on different levels. At the same time international volunteer field advocates or Backpack Refugee Rights Advocates have the goal of assisting asylum seekers to master the difficulties of the complex European asylum process. More importantly they can play an important role in the process of legally empowering asylum seekers. This paper will first analyze the different forms of access to justice that are denied to asylum seekers in Greece. Then then paper will proceed with the concept of legal empowerment of asylum seekers and it is argued that the main purpose of Backpack Refugee Rights Lawyers should be enabling asylum seekers and refugees to know and enforce their own rights. At the same time the paper identifies and addresses several problems of the work of Backpack Refugee Rights Lawyers. Overall, it is hoped that this paper will provide field advocates with information about how they can play an integral part in the legal empowerment of asylum seekers and refugees if they act according to certain guidelines.
{"title":"\"Backpack Refugee Rights Advocating\" in Greece – Access to Justice through Legal Empowerment","authors":"Magnus Manhart","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6562","url":null,"abstract":"The moment asylum seekers arrive in Greece, they are often denied access to justice on different levels. At the same time international volunteer field advocates or Backpack Refugee Rights Advocates have the goal of assisting asylum seekers to master the difficulties of the complex European asylum process. More importantly they can play an important role in the process of legally empowering asylum seekers. This paper will first analyze the different forms of access to justice that are denied to asylum seekers in Greece. Then then paper will proceed with the concept of legal empowerment of asylum seekers and it is argued that the main purpose of Backpack Refugee Rights Lawyers should be enabling asylum seekers and refugees to know and enforce their own rights. At the same time the paper identifies and addresses several problems of the work of Backpack Refugee Rights Lawyers. Overall, it is hoped that this paper will provide field advocates with information about how they can play an integral part in the legal empowerment of asylum seekers and refugees if they act according to certain guidelines.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44505757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6561
G. Kennedy
Through a survey of 90 lawyers with litigation experience, the author sought to determine the effects of recent amendments to Ontario procedural law [2010 Amendments] and a leading Supreme Court of Canada case [Hryniak] interpreting those amendments. The results were mixed. Most respondents viewed Hryniak and the 2010 Amendments as, overall, positive. But this was hardly a unanimous view. While Hryniak has certainly had effects, most respondents viewed the effectiveness of Hryniak and the 2010 Amendments to be limited, as other factors have intervened or remained as access to justice obstacles. While there was some perception that a culture shift has begun to emerge, the extent of that culture shift has been restricted. The responses did not lack all hope, but they ultimately suggest that the battle for access to civil justice must continue to be waged on multiple fronts.
{"title":"The 2010 Amendments and Hryniak v Mauldin: The Perspective of the Lawyers Who Have Lived Them","authors":"G. Kennedy","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6561","url":null,"abstract":"Through a survey of 90 lawyers with litigation experience, the author sought to determine the effects of recent amendments to Ontario procedural law [2010 Amendments] and a leading Supreme Court of Canada case [Hryniak] interpreting those amendments. The results were mixed. Most respondents viewed Hryniak and the 2010 Amendments as, overall, positive. But this was hardly a unanimous view. While Hryniak has certainly had effects, most respondents viewed the effectiveness of Hryniak and the 2010 Amendments to be limited, as other factors have intervened or remained as access to justice obstacles. While there was some perception that a culture shift has begun to emerge, the extent of that culture shift has been restricted. The responses did not lack all hope, but they ultimately suggest that the battle for access to civil justice must continue to be waged on multiple fronts.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42823333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6563
Mark N. Zion
This article engages with Canadian ‘right to shelter’ discourse, with a focus on shared assumptions that do crucial work but are sometimes unstated. It offers a ‘chrono-political’ framework to organize various claims made in the courtroom, in legal academic commentary, and by homeless people themselves. People sleeping outdoors have had noteworthy success in court, preventing immediate bodily peril. However, the ‘emergency’ temporality in those cases ultimately offers a limited politics. The author evaluates proposals from legal academics who therefore prescribe court orders that aim to transcend emergency protection: the state ought proactively to provide some minimal level of shelter to everyone, thereby conjoining the emergency temporality with a longer term ‘progressive’ temporality. However, it is argued that these proposals insufficiently formulate how judges understand their institutional role and the extent to which courtroom doctrine can redirect wider neoliberal trends. Regulative assumptions about ‘gradual improvement’ in the law must themselves be interrogated. As an antipode for the courtroom emergency temporality, a ‘dissensual’ temporality is explored, not as a ‘solution,’ but as an already operant politics, one not previously explored in legal academic commentary on the ‘right to shelter.’ Never to be romanticized, the tent city is nonetheless seen to enact what Jacques Rancière terms ‘dissensus,’ in which participants stage their equality in a way that calls into question the existing arrangement of political intelligibility. Amidst present constraints, dissensus discloses an expansive nonlinear temporality that channels egalitarian predecessors, taking feasible action in the present and attempting to prefigure a more equal future dwelling arrangement.
{"title":"Making Time for Critique: Canadian ‘Right to Shelter’ Debates in a Chrono-Political Frame","authors":"Mark N. Zion","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v37i0.6563","url":null,"abstract":"This article engages with Canadian ‘right to shelter’ discourse, with a focus on shared assumptions that do crucial work but are sometimes unstated. It offers a ‘chrono-political’ framework to organize various claims made in the courtroom, in legal academic commentary, and by homeless people themselves. People sleeping outdoors have had noteworthy success in court, preventing immediate bodily peril. However, the ‘emergency’ temporality in those cases ultimately offers a limited politics. The author evaluates proposals from legal academics who therefore prescribe court orders that aim to transcend emergency protection: the state ought proactively to provide some minimal level of shelter to everyone, thereby conjoining the emergency temporality with a longer term ‘progressive’ temporality. However, it is argued that these proposals insufficiently formulate how judges understand their institutional role and the extent to which courtroom doctrine can redirect wider neoliberal trends. Regulative assumptions about ‘gradual improvement’ in the law must themselves be interrogated. As an antipode for the courtroom emergency temporality, a ‘dissensual’ temporality is explored, not as a ‘solution,’ but as an already operant politics, one not previously explored in legal academic commentary on the ‘right to shelter.’ Never to be romanticized, the tent city is nonetheless seen to enact what Jacques Rancière terms ‘dissensus,’ in which participants stage their equality in a way that calls into question the existing arrangement of political intelligibility. Amidst present constraints, dissensus discloses an expansive nonlinear temporality that channels egalitarian predecessors, taking feasible action in the present and attempting to prefigure a more equal future dwelling arrangement.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47604399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6415
Jenni Bergman
Huge numbers of children in Canada suffer from mental health issues, yet only a fraction gets needed supports and services. Left untreated, childhood mental illnesses carry serious consequences for children, families, and society as a whole. This public health crisis is significantly more pronounced for children who are engaged with the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems (“crossover youth”). Crossover youth face multiplicative challenges, including disproportionate rates of mental health issues. In this article, I explore how the failure to provide crossover youth with needed supports and services, and the related dire consequences suffered by these children and society more generally (e.g. deteriorating mental health, repeated engagement in the criminal justice system) is tied to the failure in the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems to recognize the effects of the intersection of the various challenges and disadvantages (e.g. poverty, racism, instability) experienced by these children. I describe the paradigm of intersectionality, and argue that the adoption of an intersectional approach by the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems is imperative in order for the legal system to meet its mandate and protect and promote the well-being of these vulnerable children.
{"title":"Intersectionality: A Means for Addressing the Needs of Children with Mental Health Issues who are Engaged with the Family Law and Criminal Justice Systems?","authors":"Jenni Bergman","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6415","url":null,"abstract":"Huge numbers of children in Canada suffer from mental health issues, yet only a fraction gets needed supports and services. Left untreated, childhood mental illnesses carry serious consequences for children, families, and society as a whole. This public health crisis is significantly more pronounced for children who are engaged with the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems (“crossover youth”). Crossover youth face multiplicative challenges, including disproportionate rates of mental health issues. In this article, I explore how the failure to provide crossover youth with needed supports and services, and the related dire consequences suffered by these children and society more generally (e.g. deteriorating mental health, repeated engagement in the criminal justice system) is tied to the failure in the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems to recognize the effects of the intersection of the various challenges and disadvantages (e.g. poverty, racism, instability) experienced by these children. I describe the paradigm of intersectionality, and argue that the adoption of an intersectional approach by the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems is imperative in order for the legal system to meet its mandate and protect and promote the well-being of these vulnerable children.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68344258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6425
Alexandra Flynn, Mariana Valverde
In May 2020 Sidewalk Labs, the Google-affiliated ‘urban innovation’ company, announced that it was abandoning its ambition to build a ‘smart city’ on Toronto’s waterfront and thus ending its three-year relationship with Waterfront Toronto. This is thus a good time to look back and examine the whole process, with a view to drawing lessons both for the future of Canadian smart city projects and the future of public sector agencies with appointed boards. This article leaves to one side the gadgets and sensors that drew much attention to the proposed project, and instead focuses on the governance aspects, especially the role of the public ‘partner’ in the contemplated public-private partnership. We find that the multi-government agency, Waterfront Toronto, had transparency and accountability deficiencies, and failed to consistently defend the public interest from the beginning (the Request for Proposals issued in May of 2017). Because the public partner in the proposed ‘deal’ was not, as is usually the case in smart city projects, a municipal corporation, our research allows us to address an important question in administrative law, namely: what powers should administrative bodies outside of government have in crafting smart city policies? In Canada, the comparatively limited Canadian scholarly work regarding urban law and governance has mainly focused on municipal governments themselves, and this scholarly void has contributed to the fact that the public is largely unaware of the numerous local bodies that oversee local matters beyond municipal governments. This paper hones into the details of the WT-Sidewalk Labs partnership to understand the powers and limitations of WT in assuming a governmental role in establishing and overseeing ‘smart city’ relationships. It ultimately argues that WT has not been – nor should it be – empowered to create a smart city along Toronto’s post-industrial waterfront. Such tasks, we argue, belong to democratic bodies like municipalities. An important contribution of this paper is to situate the evolving role of public authorities in the local governance literature and in the context of administrative law.
{"title":"Where The Sidewalk Ends: The Governance Of Waterfront Toronto’s Sidewalk Labs Deal","authors":"Alexandra Flynn, Mariana Valverde","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6425","url":null,"abstract":"In May 2020 Sidewalk Labs, the Google-affiliated ‘urban innovation’ company, announced that it was abandoning its ambition to build a ‘smart city’ on Toronto’s waterfront and thus ending its three-year relationship with Waterfront Toronto. This is thus a good time to look back and examine the whole process, with a view to drawing lessons both for the future of Canadian smart city projects and the future of public sector agencies with appointed boards. This article leaves to one side the gadgets and sensors that drew much attention to the proposed project, and instead focuses on the governance aspects, especially the role of the public ‘partner’ in the contemplated public-private partnership. We find that the multi-government agency, Waterfront Toronto, had transparency and accountability deficiencies, and failed to consistently defend the public interest from the beginning (the Request for Proposals issued in May of 2017). Because the public partner in the proposed ‘deal’ was not, as is usually the case in smart city projects, a municipal corporation, our research allows us to address an important question in administrative law, namely: what powers should administrative bodies outside of government have in crafting smart city policies? \u0000In Canada, the comparatively limited Canadian scholarly work regarding urban law and governance has mainly focused on municipal governments themselves, and this scholarly void has contributed to the fact that the public is largely unaware of the numerous local bodies that oversee local matters beyond municipal governments. This paper hones into the details of the WT-Sidewalk Labs partnership to understand the powers and limitations of WT in assuming a governmental role in establishing and overseeing ‘smart city’ relationships. It ultimately argues that WT has not been – nor should it be – empowered to create a smart city along Toronto’s post-industrial waterfront. Such tasks, we argue, belong to democratic bodies like municipalities. An important contribution of this paper is to situate the evolving role of public authorities in the local governance literature and in the context of administrative law.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47836345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6420
R. Cotterrell
This paper reflects theoretically on the concept of access to justice – focusing in turn on each of its limbs – the idea of justice and that of access. ‘Justice’ is considered here not philosophically but socio-legally in terms of a spectrum of types of justice-demands made in relation to law. The idea of ‘access’ is analysed by drawing on socio-legal theory concerned with the remoteness of lawmakers from citizens. The aim is to put the concept of access to justice into a wide theoretical context that highlights changing demands on law and new socio-legal conditions – especially those associated with contemporary multiculturalism and the increasingly significant transnational dimensions of law. The paper argues that these demands and conditions make such a wide view timely and necessary. It proposes that an analysis of relations of law and solidarity taken from Durkheimian sociology can help in clarifying the possibilities and limits of state receptiveness to access to justice demands.
{"title":"Access To Justice, Moral Distance And Changing Demands On Law","authors":"R. Cotterrell","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6420","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reflects theoretically on the concept of access to justice – focusing in turn on each of its limbs – the idea of justice and that of access. ‘Justice’ is considered here not philosophically but socio-legally in terms of a spectrum of types of justice-demands made in relation to law. The idea of ‘access’ is analysed by drawing on socio-legal theory concerned with the remoteness of lawmakers from citizens. The aim is to put the concept of access to justice into a wide theoretical context that highlights changing demands on law and new socio-legal conditions – especially those associated with contemporary multiculturalism and the increasingly significant transnational dimensions of law. The paper argues that these demands and conditions make such a wide view timely and necessary. It proposes that an analysis of relations of law and solidarity taken from Durkheimian sociology can help in clarifying the possibilities and limits of state receptiveness to access to justice demands.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49637045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6431
A. Strömbergsson-DeNora
Visitors, an office in charitable corporations that occupies the position of the Superior Court in all matters pertaining to the charity, are a forgotten area of law in Canada. This article resurrects the jurisdiction by explaining its utility for university corporations. Visitors are private courts of appeal from university decisions. They are empowered to adjudicate academic as well as legal disputes relating to relationships between the university, its officers, its professors, and its students. The article lays out the private law origins of the office and contrasts this approach with the administrative law model more recently in vogue. The administrative law approach to visitation has, over the course of the twentieth century, eroded the jurisdiction, yet it appears from Canadian practice that the jurisdiction remains eminently useful across the country. The article details just how the visitor’s office has been used in Canadian universities beginning in 1803 going up to 1992. In so doing, the office’s strong points as well as its weaknesses are discussed.
{"title":"Caught By Private Law: A Review Of Visitors’ Jurisdiction In Canada","authors":"A. Strömbergsson-DeNora","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6431","url":null,"abstract":"Visitors, an office in charitable corporations that occupies the position of the Superior Court in all matters pertaining to the charity, are a forgotten area of law in Canada. This article resurrects the jurisdiction by explaining its utility for university corporations. Visitors are private courts of appeal from university decisions. They are empowered to adjudicate academic as well as legal disputes relating to relationships between the university, its officers, its professors, and its students. The article lays out the private law origins of the office and contrasts this approach with the administrative law model more recently in vogue. The administrative law approach to visitation has, over the course of the twentieth century, eroded the jurisdiction, yet it appears from Canadian practice that the jurisdiction remains eminently useful across the country. The article details just how the visitor’s office has been used in Canadian universities beginning in 1803 going up to 1992. In so doing, the office’s strong points as well as its weaknesses are discussed.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49256440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6418
Kayal Munisami
Much has been written about how automation will change the legal profession as a whole, less so about how automation might affect women in legal practice. This paper briefly maps the likely changes that legal tech (legal technology) will bring to the provision of legal services, and explores how these changes might affect the barriers to advancement that women face in the profession. It determines that, while the use of legal tech may improve women’s work/life balance and overall job satisfaction by bringing about more flexible working hours, positive changes to the billing hours’ system, and fairer hiring and promotion mechanisms, an unfettered inclusion of legal tech might lead to increased working hours for less wages, increased competition for case files among associates, and the perpetuation of existing gender biases when using algorithms in the hiring and promotion process. Finally, the paper makes several recommendations on how law societies, bar associations and other relevant regulatory bodies could ensure that legal tech promotes rather than hinders Equality & Diversity in the legal profession. It proposes that: (1) detailed data on men and women lawyers should be collected to better inform equality and diversity policies; (2) law firms should be required to report on their progress in pursuing equality and diversity; (3) management techniques to promote work/life balance and more flexible pricing systems should be encouraged; (4) female entrepreneurship in legal tech should be promoted; and, (5) technological due process procedures should be required when using algorithms in law firm management to ensure fairness, accuracy and accountability.
{"title":"Legal Technology and the Future of Women in Law","authors":"Kayal Munisami","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6418","url":null,"abstract":"Much has been written about how automation will change the legal profession as a whole, less so about how automation might affect women in legal practice. This paper briefly maps the likely changes that legal tech (legal technology) will bring to the provision of legal services, and explores how these changes might affect the barriers to advancement that women face in the profession. It determines that, while the use of legal tech may improve women’s work/life balance and overall job satisfaction by bringing about more flexible working hours, positive changes to the billing hours’ system, and fairer hiring and promotion mechanisms, an unfettered inclusion of legal tech might lead to increased working hours for less wages, increased competition for case files among associates, and the perpetuation of existing gender biases when using algorithms in the hiring and promotion process. Finally, the paper makes several recommendations on how law societies, bar associations and other relevant regulatory bodies could ensure that legal tech promotes rather than hinders Equality & Diversity in the legal profession. It proposes that: (1) detailed data on men and women lawyers should be collected to better inform equality and diversity policies; (2) law firms should be required to report on their progress in pursuing equality and diversity; (3) management techniques to promote work/life balance and more flexible pricing systems should be encouraged; (4) female entrepreneurship in legal tech should be promoted; and, (5) technological due process procedures should be required when using algorithms in law firm management to ensure fairness, accuracy and accountability.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42053543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6419
A. Hutchinson
While not touted as a universal panacea for access problems, contingency fees have received general praise as an important and justice-improving initiative. By back-loading the payment of legal fees, the assumption is that the interests of clients and litigants will be better served. I challenge that received wisdom. While the rise of contingency fee agreements between lawyers and clients has increased the number of people who can afford lawyers and make successful claims, the more challenging issue is whether that increase is being achieved at too high a price to clients and litigants – while more people are able to bring a case, which they could not otherwise have done, they will be receiving far less than they might actually be entitled to. In short, do contingency fees work as much or more to the advantage of lawyers than clients? I suggest not.
{"title":"Improving Access to Justice: Do Contingency Fees Really Work?","authors":"A. Hutchinson","doi":"10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v36i0.6419","url":null,"abstract":"While not touted as a universal panacea for access problems, contingency fees have received general praise as an important and justice-improving initiative. By back-loading the payment of legal fees, the assumption is that the interests of clients and litigants will be better served. I challenge that received wisdom. While the rise of contingency fee agreements between lawyers and clients has increased the number of people who can afford lawyers and make successful claims, the more challenging issue is whether that increase is being achieved at too high a price to clients and litigants – while more people are able to bring a case, which they could not otherwise have done, they will be receiving far less than they might actually be entitled to. In short, do contingency fees work as much or more to the advantage of lawyers than clients? I suggest not.","PeriodicalId":56232,"journal":{"name":"Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47257736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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