Publication of the interim report on the Legal assistance to litigants in person grant

In April 2020, the Access to Justice Foundation and the Department of Justice (MOJ) launched the In-Person Litigants Legal Support Grant (LSLIP), a 2-year program funding a range of early intervention services for litigants. litigants in person. LSLIP funds 11 grant projects across England and Wales which provide advice nationally, regionally and locally, to in-person litigants at different stages of their problem in several areas of civil and family law . Working in partnership and early intervention are at the heart of all these activities, in order to achieve better results for clients.

To build a collective database of program benefits, each recipient collected and reported a range of quantitative and qualitative data regarding the advice they provided, the clients reached, and the impact of that advice on improving customer results.

This interim report brings together the data and evidence gathered so far, to report on progress toward the grant’s goals. These conclusions are based on an initial analysis and are therefore not necessarily an accurate indicator of performance at this stage or reflect the positions that will be reached in the final report.

The main conclusions of the report are as follows:

• LSLIP beneficiaries have provided a range of legal advice, practical support and procedural information to thousands of people across England and Wales with civil and family issues. The scholarships have enabled approximately 10,000 people to benefit from personalized support on their civil and family problems, and to significantly larger volumes of access to public legal information and advice.
• Most of the advice given by local and regional beneficiaries was first general advice (68% of advice) on family, employment and housing problems (nearly 75% of problems). However, substantial volumes of pre-judicial records and advice have been provided.
• Generally speaking, local and regional beneficiaries seem to reach a cohort of users similar to other counseling services. Most customers are female (62%), between 25 and 55 (65%) and Caucasian (91%). At least a quarter of clients have a disability, but there is evidence to suggest that this is an underestimate and that a large number of clients have poor physical and mental health as well as other indicators of vulnerability.
• Working in partnership has been key to LSLIP and the enhanced support available to litigants in person. Formalizing referral pathways between departments and sharing specialist resources has allowed organizations to extend counseling to wider geographies and legal areas, to provide a more holistic service that can solve the entire problem. of a customer.
• Early evidence suggests that the advice and support provided improves customer outcomes, including increasing customer understanding of how to resolve their issue and increasing customer confidence to act quickly. This helps resolve issues at an earlier stage, before they reach the court or tribunal.

Further data will be collected throughout the life of the LSLIP and these trends will be reported in the final evaluation.

Remarks:

In February 2019, the Department of Justice released the Legal Support Action Plan which outlines the government’s commitment to a new vision for legal support, based on early intervention. To achieve this vision, the legal support action plan contained several commitments to pilot and evaluate different forms of early legal support, to better understand what interventions work best, when and for whom. Among those pledges was the pledge to increase Justice Department funding for the in-person litigant support strategy from £1.45m a year to £3m for 2 years.

This increased funding, the LSLIP Grant, is provided by the Department of Justice in partnership with the Access to Justice Foundation. The Access to Justice Foundation is a charitable organization with a wealth of knowledge and experience in the area of ​​legal aid, as well as significant experience in managing grants in the consultancy sector.

The Department of Justice and the Access to Justice Foundation have worked closely together to develop the LSLIP grant, which improves the legal support available in England and Wales by funding new, expanded or intensified services that support the earliest possible interventions for litigants in person.