Affordable Justice
This report identified innovative strategies for making access to private legal assistance more affordable for most Australians.
A wide range of innovative practices exist across the legal system which have the capacity to make the delivery of legal assistance more affordable. Most have emerged in isolation, or to respond to particular demands in the market, and have not been developed in any co-ordinated way.
The aim of the CIJ’s research was not only to highlight these practices but the great potential that may lie in developing them in combination, and delivering them in a more strategic and supported way.
Its aim was to bridge the gap between perceptions of responsibility – of provision of public assistance by government on the one hand, and the provision of pro bono services by the profession on the other. In doing so, the CIJ suggests that efforts to increase access to the justice system should not be mutually exclusive; that there are many ways that the profession and governments can collaborate to achieve greater affordability.
