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The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice
Everyday Legal Problems Survey
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T
h e C a na di a n Foru m on Civil Justice
(CFCJ), located at Osgoode Hall Law School,
conducted a national legal problems survey in
order to explore the nature and extent of selfreported legal problems by Canadian adults eighteen
years of age and older.
The logic underlying the decision to pursue this
research is that a legal problem does not begin when
first contact is made with the formal justice system
or when a lawyer’s services are engaged. Rather, legal
problems are rooted in the normal events of everyday
life. As such, to fully understand the nature and
extent of legal problems experienced by the public,
research must start when the natural history of legal
problems begin, in the everyday lives of individuals.
Based on standard definitions established in
the pioneering studies in this body of research—
The Legal Needs of the American Public, American
Bar Association, 1994 and Paths to Justice: What
People Do and Think About Going to Law, Hazel
Genn, 1999— legal problems are still legal in nature
even if people do not recognize the legal aspects of
the problem or do not engage any part of the formal
justice system in an attempt to resolve them.
In the CFCJ’s legal problems survey, respondents
were asked if they had experienced any of eighty-four
different problem scenarios, each carefully worded to
ensure that they had justiciable content. Survey data
was collected between September 2013 and April
2014 from a sample size of more than 3000 persons.
The results of the survey indicate that within
ê Photo credit: Canadian Forum on Civil Justice.
a three-year period, forty-seven percent of adult
Canadians will experience one or more legal problems
they consider to be serious and difficult to resolve.
Only seven percent of the sample said they went
to court or to a tribunal to resolve the problem and
among respondents who said they went to the
formal justice system, sixty-five percent said they
were represented. Considering other paths to justice
pursued by respondents—self-help and non-legal
advice from various organizations—forty-three
percent of respondents who said the problem had
been resolved felt the outcome was not fair. Almost
one third of respondents said they had achieved little
or none of what they had expected in the outcome.
The dissatisfaction of so many Canadians following
the resolution of a legal problem signals an access to
justice problem in Canada. The data suggests that
we have to do better, all around, in providing people
with timely and appropriate solutions to particular
problems. This is often referred to as a continuum
of service approach. Increasing the legal capability
of the public, early intervention and building more
effective triage, and referral mechanisms to get
the right fit between the problem and the type of
assistance are all parts of the solution. Additionally,
this may in f