Obiter Dicta Issue 14 - April 7, 2014 | Page 5
page 5
Lost in the advice maze: what happens when I
can’t find the legal help I need?
NE W S
HANNAH DE JONG
Contributor
Your landlord refuses to address your mold problem. You were wrongfully terminated from your
job. You doctor neglected to follow standard procedure. All of a sudden, you find yourself faced
with a legal problem. Who do you call? Where
do you start looking for help? Seeking answers
to your questions seems like an impossible task,
and as frustration sets in, you soon feel like giving
up. This cycle of conflicting, confusing, and inaccessible legal information and advice is called the
“advice maze”.
What we know from access to justice research
is that legal problems gather and cluster with
other problems such as mental health, relationship, or unemployment issues, forming a complex
web of difficulties. Many individuals and families do not experience one isolated legal issue,
but clusters of inter-related issues, which can
sometimes stem from a single “trigger” problem. People with one or more of these complex
problems are unable or unsure of where to turn
for help. This is due to a lack of access to reliable legal advice, social exclusion, inability to
enforce rights, and a lack of awareness of rights
and responsibilities.
One significant side effect of the advice maze
is referral fatigue. The more advisors and services
a person visits, the less likely he or she will obtain
helpful advice. A report outlining the advice maze
by the Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC)
(2004), states that while 83% of users did not
have success with the first advisor they had been
referred to, the rate of success declined for each
subsequent advisor. Understandably, this phenomenon of the advice maze and referral fatigue
causes many people facing legal problems to
become overwhelmed and give up – leaving many
legal problems unresolved. The LSRC report
found that about 1/6th of those who looked for
legal advice did not obtain it successfully.
What can we take away from the “advice maze”
phenomenon? Clearly, it is very important to
equip people with the right information and tools
as early as possible, so they can navigate sources
of advice effectively. Legal information should be
clear and easy to understand, as well as readily
available. In terms of giving advice, service providers should provide clear direction to an appropriate alternative source of advice to discourage
people from giving up trying to solve their legal
problems. Additionally, there is a need to raise
awareness of individual rights and the processes
that can be used to affect them. These findings
are of particular relevance to community legal
services, and are key for making access to justice
for all a reality rather than an aspiration.
This article is based on the Canadian Forum for
Civil Justice’s new infographic “The Advice Maze”.
CFCJ’s infographic series takes academic articles
and summarizes their most important points in
graphic form. Find it online via the CFCJ website
at http://www.cfcj-fcjc.org/infographics/advicemaze.
THUMBS DOWN to. . .
© 2012–2014 Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP. All rights reserved. | 416 869 5300
Cassels Brock
2013/2014 season
Obiter Dicta student ad
“Yellow - Coffee”
4B Prestige, b&w
Contact: Heather Murray
[email protected]
416 869 5782 - fax 416 642 7137
Please PRINT a hard copy of the
file and either FAX it or SCAN and
EMAIL it back to me, thanks!
the 381 unused agendas sitting outside the L&L office. We
counted.
Monday, April 7, 2014