Prince: Co-chair of working group
The Civil Justice Council (CJC) has called for the creation of a “central hub” to develop a strategy for digital inclusion and make sure access to justice is a priority.
The CJC’s Futures Group said the end-to-end user journey through an aspect of the civil justice process should be mapped to identify “inclusive processes and gaps and opportunities”.
The working group went on: “Digital disadvantage only serves to increase the broader pool of those who are unable to access justice through a variety of causes.
“For this reason, we have argued that the language of ‘inclusion’ would be more appropriate than using the terminology of ‘disadvantage’ in order to promulgate the idea that the justice system should be available to all and that the user is the priority in the design of the digital justice system.
“There is a sense that the concept of digital disadvantage plays into the deficit model of requiring the return of legal aid to solve the problem.”
The working group believed that “shifting the dial to a focus on the design of inclusive technology will actually serve wider society as a whole and increase capabilities as a priority”.
In their introduction to the group’s Report on Digital Disadvantage, co-chairs Elizabeth Smart, professor of legal education at Birmingham City University, and Sue Prince, professor of law at Exeter University, said the “dynamic nature of change in the digital sphere” had led the CJC to focus on “the nature of digital disadvantage and its relationship to access to justice more broadly”.
The academics said: “Technology, used appropriately, can help a lot of people at a much lower cost than providing individual one-to-one advice especially when technological solutions are integrated into justice strategic design.
“The question is how to separate digital disadvantage from other forms of disadvantage that are inherent in the idea of access to justice.
“Digital capability does not mean that a person will also have legal understanding, or an ability to navigate the legal system whether it is online or in-person.”
Smart: Co-chair of working group
The professors said concerns were raised in working group discussions about “the lack of awareness by members of the public of dispute resolution methods generally, and also the ethical underpinnings of digital and AI developments, which may or may not be designed with vulnerable litigants in mind”.
The report said there was “general optimism that the use of technology can help improve access to justice”.
However, the positivity was “not felt universally” and the CJC “cannot assume that technology will be a magical fix to enable greater access to justice”.
“The risks associated with the use of AI [artificial intelligence] could undermine trust in the legal system more generally if not developed with care and supervision.
“Most investment in legal technology is being made in B2B rather than in access to justice. Therefore, the role of responsible innovation lies in encouraging businesses and start-ups to work in the digital disadvantage space in conjunction with the third sector.”
The working group said HM Courts and Tribunals’ user inclusion team was “seeking to design out barriers for access to justice and considering how to make reasonable adjustments” in the digital justice system.
“However, there is still a need for more data flags to be built into the system to generate more data to enable greater understanding of user need. This means understanding when users get lost in the system or when they find the technology too difficult to understand or access.”
Other recommendations included encouraging greater focus on data collection, and research on unmet legal need, and the intersection of this with digital tool development, and supporting “the idea that future work on inclusive design incorporates principles that empower court users to develop greater knowledge about the justice system, so it is not simply at point of need, but more widely and consistently disseminated as public legal education”.
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