Park, Kevin: 2009 Summer PURA Project
Abstract
The status of technology used in the English legal aid system has previously been studied
only in a limited manner. The Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC) has conducted civil
justice surveys in 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2007. Outside of those studies, however, relatively little
data exists on either government agencies other than the LSC and non-governmental legal aid
providers. Thus the purpose of this study is to analyze the existing data for LSC use of
technology, and collect new data on the use of technology by non-governmental legal aid
providers. In particular, data will be collected on the Citizen’s Advice Bureaus and Londonbased solicitors firms.
It would appear that the use of technology, primarily telephone lines and internet, has
increased since the reform of the English legal aid system in 2000. LSC data demonstrates that
the government-funded technology experiments have allowed for more efficient provision of
legal aid services without significant increases in funding for civil legal aid projects. CAB data
also demonstrates a regular increase in the use of their website for legal advice, although no
financial comparison is available. In contrast, no definitive trend claim can be made regarding
solicitors firms because this study marks the first instance in which data of this nature was
collected from solicitors. In addition, the limited number of participants may not permit the
findings of this study to be representative of all London-based solicitors firms. As a result, more
research is required on this topic, especially with regard to civil legal aid providing solicitors.
Background
The 1999 Access to Justice Act created the Legal Services Commission (LSC) in the
United Kingdom and reshaped the legal aid community. Since then, the Legal Services
Commission has experimented with technology in order to expand availability of services for
eligible residents of the United Kingdom through the Methods of Delivery pilots. Projects
included the Telephone Advice Pilot which examined the effectiveness of providing advice in
legal matters over the telephone and the Specialist Support Pilot which examined the
effectiveness of having specialists train other staff and/or provide direct advice to clients.1 In
addition, the Legal Services Commission has also conducted service provider surveys and client
assessment surveys that have included questions regarding the use of technology by service
providers.
The Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC), the independent research branch of the
Legal Services Commission, has a now, continually running civil and social justice survey which
also includes general questions regarding the use of technology by clients. The organization has
recently added additional questions into the survey, but has not yet been able to analyze the data.
Purpose
The original purposes of this study were the following: (a) determine primary methods of
delivery of legal aid providing solicitors, (b) determine the importance of technology in
provision of legal aid services by legal aid providing solicitors, and (c) determine changes in the
use of website and telephone services provided by the largest civil legal aid providing
1
Legal Services Commission, Improving Access to Advice in the Community Legal Service (London, UK:
Legal Services Commission, 2004), 3-5.
organizations, Community Legal Services and Citizens Advice Bureaux. The study design was
approved for exemption by the Homewood Institutional Review Board (No. 2009060).
However, due to an insufficient number of participants, the purposes (a) and (b) had to be
modified. The replacement purpose of the study was to determine the availability of online
service provision by legal aid providing solicitors firm, specifically via email. This was done
through a combination of responses from the original study and data collection from solicitors
firms’ websites and webmasters. The goal was to determine any correlations between area of
advice-technology use, work experience of solicitors-technology use, and firm size-technology
use. Goal (c) was fulfilled as planned.
In particular, the LSRC Civil Justice Survey found that use of internet increased from 4%
in 2001 to 16% in 2007, email use increased from 2.0% in 2006 to 2.5% in 2007, and telephone
use remained relatively stable at just over 50% from 2006 to 2007.2 Although the survey took a
random sample of the population, it would be interesting to see whether supplier increases
corresponded to client use increases. However, as the scope of this project is only on the present
situation of civil legal aid, there is no means available of making a time trend comparison.
Results
(A) Primary methods of delivery of legal aid providing solicitors
2
Pascoe Pleasance et al., Civil Justice in England and Wales: Report of the 2007 English and Welsh Civil
Justice Survey (London, UK: Legal Services Commission, 2008), 54-55.
20/100 participants took part in the solicitor technology study. Given the small number of
participants, it is unclear whether these results are representative of the entire London legal aid
providing solicitor community.
The data above indicates that all of the participants used telephone (office land lines) in
providing legal aid services to clients. In addition, mobile phone and email were used by 83% of
solicitors. Many solicitors noted that they primarily used mobile phones when they were outside
of the office and preferred other medium. Many also noted that email was not the most secure
method of contact for attorneys and clients. 67% indicated that they used internet websites to
provide services to clients, mostly as a method of obtaining enquiries from potential clients or
providing general information about legal processes. Most notably, 83% of solicitors mentioned
that technological innovation was a high priority for their firm. This would suggest that we will
see rises in the use of technology by solicitors firms in the future.
(B) Importance of technology in provision of legal aid services by legal aid providing solicitors
The second part of this study focused on determining the importance of a specific technology,
websites, for various solicitors firms. The firms were divided into categories depending on the
number of full time solicitors on staff. A pool of 119 firms had the following distribution: 58
small (1-20 solicitors), 20 medium (21-50 solicitors), 8 large (50+ solicitors), and 33 unlisted.
Based on size, the firms demontrated greater emphasis on certain forms of electronic
communication than others.
Small and medium firms primarily used a general email address on their website as the
means of contact (91% and 95%). Large firms only 75% of large firms used general email
accounts along with 85% of unlisted firms. In contrast, large firms most often provided personal
email addresses for individual solicitors (88%) whereas small and medium firms provided this
information less often (50% and 75%). Unlisted firms demonstrated a marked anomaly in this
regard with only 9% of unlisted firms providing personal email information.
Lastly, the distribution of firms that used online submission forms to collect data from
prospective and existing clients remained relatively standard among all firms sizes (33% small,
25% medium, 38% large, and 36% unlisted).
(C) Website and Telephone Use from LSC and CAB
1. The Community Legal Services is the civil legal aid branch of the government funded
Legal Services Commission.
Community Legal Services Direct, the telephone advice serve provided by the Legal
Services Commission, experienced a 1550% rise in telephone advice enquiries from 2000-2001
to -2007 In 2007-2008, the number of enquiries fell by 154%, but the reason is not known. In
addition, the number of cases closed by specialist advisers using the telephone advice line
increased by 408% from 2004-2005 to 2006-2007 and fell by -23.9% in 2007-2008. The
decrease in cases closed is directly related to the decrease in telephone enquiries as the
Community Legal Services Direct is the source of specialist case closing data.
In relation to the Community Legal Services website, the website experienced an increase
by 528% from 2004-2005 to 2006-2007 and fell by -37.2% in 2007-2008. The number of leaflets
downloaded from the Community Legal Service website followed a similar trend. After
increasing by 814% from 2004-2005 2006-2007, the 2007-2008 amount fell by -75% As in the
case of specialist cases closed to telephone enquiries, the decreased number of leaflets
downloaded directly correlates to the decreased number of website hits.
As a common trend can be seen in all four areas mentioned above, it is possible that there
may have been an overall decrease in the use of Community Legal Services in 2007-2008.
However, it may also be likely that the Legal Service Commission changed its method of data
collection as presented in its Annual Reports from which all of the above statistics were gathered.
Without further information from the LSRC, the reason for this decline cannot be confirmed.
In terms of funding, overall legal aid funding increased from 2000-2001 to 2007-2008,
with a notable plateau in funding after 2003-2004. At the same time, funding for civil
representation and legal help remained relatively constant throughout this period. This indicates
that the government sponsored Community Legal Services and LSC website provided services
more efficiently over time by increasing the number of clients served while maintaining a stable
level of funding.
2. The Citizens Advice Bureaux are local organizations that provide assistance in a variety
of areas including legal issues. The organizations are networked into a larger system. Data was
collected for the system as a whole in terms of website use. CAB experienced a continued
increase in the use of their website for legal help from 2001-2009. Data for 2003-2004 is missing.
Given the trends in the other years, however, it may be possible to infer that 2003-2004
experienced a greater number of website hits than previously.
Conclusion
Rather than mapping trends in English use of technology by government agencies and
solicitors firms providing legal aid, this study resulted in a snapshot of the use of technology in
2009. For government agencies, greater data collected by the LSRC allowed for limited analysis
of the use of technology in England after the 2000 legal aid reforms. The data shows that the
government telephone line and website are both increasingly used as sources of information for
legal aid clients. The reason for the decline in 2007-2008 may become clear after future data is
collected.
With regards to solicitors, it appears that some solicitors are beginning to incorporate
greater use of technology in their provision of legal aid services. This may be emblematic of a
larger shift toward the use of technology in the legal profession as a whole and not necessarily
only for legal aid providers. At the same time, land line telephones remain the primary
technology used in legal aid, followed by mobile phones and email, and then websites. More data
is required to make analytic trend claims regarding whether the role of technology is increasing
or not. The only available results on this topic, the solicitors’ own evaluations of the priority of
technology in their firms, suggests that future research on this topic should see an increase in
technology used over time.