“Legal NHS Direct” without government cuts could work
Digital communications could be more widely used to maintain access to justice in times of austerity, new research has claimed.
The civil justice system should take advantage of the benefits of websites, telephones and video communications, according to Face to Face Legal Services and their Alternatives: Global lessons from the digital revolution, a report by Professors Roger Smith and Alan Paterson. The authors call on the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to commit to “helping citizens help themselves where they can”, to continue to provide free access to legislation and cases, and to encourage innovation in legal services provision by funding strategic projects and setting up awards schemes.
Smith and Paterson recommend an integrated “digital first but not digital only” service linking online information with telephone and face-to-face advice, as happens in New South Wales and New Zealand. They also recommend that people could be given digital advice to guide them through a divorce, as on the rechtwijzer.nl site in the Netherlands.
Smith, NLJ columnist and former director of Justice, says: “We all know the bad news: legal aid cuts. But, technology could provide good news if we could use it in the right way to maintain—and even strengthen—adequate access to justice.
“The government’s policy of ‘digital only’ will prove a disaster, but ‘digital first’ is surely the way of the future. That is the way that New South Wales and the Netherlands, just to take two examples, are doing.”
Smith adds: “Ironically, what we need is a legal form of NHS Direct, pretty much as it was being developed before the government cut it."
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