One approach that has emerged to increase access to legal services and improve access to justice is “unbundling.” Unbundling legal professionals are retained to perform specific tasks, to provide legal coaching or to represent clients for limited processes, rather than to take responsibility for entire legal matters. While this requires clients to take greater responsibility for their legal journey, unbundling can reduce costs and therefore barriers to access to legal services.
Few lawyers currently offer and actively promote unbundled services but demand is increasing, as resources continue to become available to help clients who choose, or are forced, to navigate the legal system on their own. There is currently little data to guide evidence-based policymaking and service improvement with respect to unbundled legal services and the user experience. There is a need to study how these services are evolving and their effectiveness in promoting better outcomes for clients and the broader goal of access to justice.
This initiative, The Family Law Unbundled Legal Services Research Project (ULSRP), aims to develop, implement and iterate a system to collect and report, on an ongoing basis, the experiences of both lawyers and clients with unbundled legal services in BC.
This is a client-centered initiative. It is designed to use first-hand client feedback as a means to influence and improve the current and future market offering of unbundled legal services in BC.
The project also aims to improve client awareness and access to innovative legal services in BC by promoting and supporting the increased reach, number of, and capabilities of legal professionals who offer unbundled legal services.
The means to this Goal is developing and managing a reliable system that continuously collects, analyzes and reports relevant data on the unbundled legal services system as a whole in BC. This data—and the insights it will hold—will be made available to legal professionals and stakeholders of the BC Justice system who have a mandate (eg. regulator) or ability (eg. service providers) to grow and improve the legal service offerings in BC.
The following points describe the method / approach we’ve taken:
Developing a standardized, quantifiable model to articulate and gather data on the client experience.
Developing and deploying an easy to implement client survey tool that collects and organizes feedback data for service development use by both legal service providers and the profession as a whole.
Engaging the members of the ULS Roster—a group committed to improving client-centered legal service delivery—to use the tool in practice.
Collaborating with other public legal organizations and information providers to forge opportunities and standardized processes to break the “data silos” and foster more open sharing of critical information and data.
Phase 2 of the project has completed, and the report outlining the findings can be found here:
Phase 3 of the project is being considered. The work and momentum realized over the past 3 years are too valuable to let wain, and the project team hopes this work may continue as an ongoing developmental initiative benefiting all.