Using Multiple Perspective Legal Needs Surveys to Improve Access to Legal Information: Reflections on Results from the Saskatchewan Legal Needs Assessment

Description

Diverse perspectives are needed to solve complex issues. Recognizing this, the Centre for Research, Evaluation, and Action Towards Equal Justice and the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science and Justice Studies partnered on a multi-faceted project to better understand unmet legal needs in Saskatchewan with funding from the Law Society of Saskatchewan and Law Foundation of Saskatchewan.

Join this webinar to learn about the legal information-related results of the Saskatchewan Legal Needs Assessment conducted during 2021-2022. This presentation will describe how Saskatchewan’s Legal Needs surveys adopted a multiple-perspective approach, through undertaking a Community Agency Survey and Lawyer Survey. These surveys were launched alongside Statistics Canada’s 2021 Canadian Legal Problems Survey, a user-focused data collection survey. The purpose of these surveys was to capture multiple perspectives (legal, community agency, and user perceptions and experiences) to better understand and address access to justice within communities across Saskatchewan. The engagement of multiple viewpoints serves to provide a comprehensive and robust perspective of legal needs in Saskatchewan and contributes as a model for other justice-centered data collection projects in Canada.

Links:

• https://law.usask.ca/createjustice/projects/legal-needs-survey-report-final-2023-03-31952.pdf
• https://law.usask.ca/createjustice/
• https://cfbsjs.usask.ca/

Speaker Bio

Pamela Kovacs

Brea Lowenberger, BA, JD, LLM, is Saskatchewan's Access to Justice Coordinator and Cofounder/Director of CREATE Justice, an action-oriented access to justice research lab at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S), Canada, that is working on transforming legal and justice services and the removal of systemic barriers to justice; and a sessional lecturer for the award-winning Dean’s Forum on Access to Justice and Dispute Resolution course at the U of S.

Heather Heavin, B.Sc. (Hons), LL.B. (University of Saskatchewan), LL.M. (Harvard) is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean Research and Graduate Studies at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan. Her teaching and research areas have focused on business, trade, oil and gas and administrative law, with particular interest in risk assessment and data-informed, justice sector reform. Heather joined the faculty in 2003 after practicing with the firm of MLT LLP (now MLT Aikins) and clerking to Chief Justice E.D. Bayda of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal. She is an award- winning teacher, a former member of the JSGS School of Public policy, member of the Forensic Centre for Behavioral and Justice Studies and the CREATE Justice research centre at the University of Saskatchewan.