Pascoe Pleasence

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University College London

This chapter provides an introduction to governance statistics relating to access to justice. It also includes a definition and taxonomy of access to justice

This report offers an empirical tool to help planners, statisticians, policy makers and advocates understand people's everyday legal problems and experience with the justice system. It sets out a framework for the conceptualisation, implementation and analysis of legal needs surveys and is informed by analysis of a wide range of national surveys co...

A review of legal needs surveys globally

The report draws on findings from our recently conducted Community Perspectives of Law Survey, an Australia-wide survey of over 1800 people which explored people’s understanding of the relevance of law and, in particular, whether lawyers are seen as important in relation to everyday scenarios. Those scenarios included the kinds of problems that ar...

The report draws on findings from our recently conducted Community Perspectives of Law Survey, an Australia-wide survey of over 1800 people which explored people’s understanding of the relevance of law and, in particular, whether lawyers are seen as important in relation to everyday scenarios. Those scenarios included the kinds of problems that ari...

Legal capability has long been of evident importance in our understanding of legal problem resolution behavior. Although legal capability remains a contested concept, there is much commonality between specifications. Some aspects are generic, while others—such as legal confidence—are particular to law. Such law‐specific measures as have been develo...

All over the world, civil legal problems are ubiquitous. But while all groups in every society that has been studied experience civil justice problems, these problems and their consequences do not fall equally. Socially disadvantaged people report more problems, more serious problems, and more negative consequences from them. The lack of legal capa...

While, in the UK, attitudes to the criminal justice system have been routinely investigated less effort has been made to measure attitudes to the civil justice system. However, globally, there are increasingly numerous examples of studies of attitudes to civil justice. Robust standardised scales are important to establishing change and difference b...

The art of picking up signs that a child may be suffering from abuse at home is one of those skills that cannot easily be taught, given its dependence on a range of non-cognitive abilities. It is also difficult to study, given the number of factors that may interfere with this skill in a real-life, professional setting. An immersive virtual reality...

In England and Wales less than half of the adult population report that they have a will, with similarly low numbers found in other jurisdictions. Dying intestate can have profound implications on the family relationships, housing security, finances, employment, health and welfare of those who are left behind. Social policy initiatives designed to...

Over many decades, processes of juridification have brought about huge growth in legal rights, responsibilities and protections, yet citizens appear to poorly understand this ‘law thick’ world. This impacts citizens’ capacity to ‘name, blame and claim’ in the legal domain at a time of retreat from public funding of civil legal services. This articl...

Business owners sought advice to resolve business-related legal problems more often than other LAW Survey respondents. They also made greater use of legal advisers, financial advisers and trade/professional association advisers than individuals. Yet we know that business-related legal problems routinely result in adverse consequences and frequently...

Among LAW Survey respondents, 2,611 people (13%) described themselves as business owners. These business owners reported 984 business-related legal problems, 65 per cent of which resulted in adverse consequences (e.g. loss of income, illness or relationship breakdown). This not only impacted on business and the Australian economy, but also on busin...

New analysis of LAW Survey data has identified three distinct groups among business owners according to their likelihood of experiencing business-related and other types of legal problems ‒ ‘normal’, ‘highly elevated’ and ‘extreme’. As is the case with individuals, a relatively small proportion of business owners account for the bulk of problems. T...

This report provides the background and methods to the development off a series of standardised measures of legal confidence and attitudes to law. To date, measures in the field of legal capability have been developed in an ad-hoc fashion, with no attempt to test the psychometric properties of scales, using either classical test theory or modern ps...

This report sets out the baseline general population scores, along with details of the social and experience based patterning of scores, for five standardised measures of legal confidence and attitudes to law recently developed by the authors under a grant from the Legal Education Foundation. The measures are the General Legal Confidence (GLC), the...

Since the mid-1990s, at least 28 large-scale national surveys of the public's experience of justiciable problems have been conducted in at least 15 separate jurisdictions, reflecting widespread legal aid reform activity. While the majority of these surveys take their structure from Genn's Paths to Justice survey (1999), they vary significantly in l...

As law has become increasingly ubiquitous in modern life, the sources of help to deal with an increasing range of legal issues have become more fragmented and complex. Yet, despite the ubiquity of law and scale of the (broadly defined) legal services sector, there is evidence in England and Wales that public awareness of even the most prominent ser...

At the time of the 2011 Census, 8.3 million (or 36 per cent) of households in England and Wales were rented. Thus, the ability of individual citizens to resolve legal problems related to rented housing is a matter of broad societal importance. Looking at the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS), renting housing problems w...

This report presents findings from new analysis of English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS) data, of the relationship between mental illness and social disadvantage among young people, with a particular focus on the experience of those facing legal issues. Our findings indicate that while young people, in general, are least l...

Key Findings Courts and law are peripheral to everyday justice. • Fewer than one in ten people experiencing legal problems instruct solicitors • Consumer experience does not mirror traditional legal services distinctions including reserved activities • Deficiencies in the civil justice system in meeting consumers’ needs are largely due to difficult...

As an increasing number of Government services have moved away from traditional modes of provision to online formats, there has been a corresponding need to ensure greater access to the internet. Although older people (those over 60) are least likely of all age groups to have access to the internet in their homes, the internet holds much potential...

This report draws on more than a decade of empirical research evidence - together with current experience of service providers - to inform the design and delivery of efficient and effective legal assistance services. Written as a tool for policy makers, practitioners, service managers and researchers, the report highlights the key directions for re...

This paper summarises the discussion paper (202p.), which draws on more than a decade of empirical research evidence, together with current experience of service providers, to inform the design and delivery of efficient and effective legal assistance services. Written as a tool for policy makers, practitioners, service managers and researchers, the...

Disadvantaged groups have been found to be particularly vulnerable to civil legal problems. Disadvantage has also been linked with crime victimisation and offending. However, while it has been observed that both crime victims and offenders report particularly high levels of civil legal problem prevalence, the relationship between civil legal proble...

Legal needs surveys, including the Legal Australia-Wide (LAW) Survey, have demonstrated a strong relationship between the experience of legal problems and long-term illness/disability. Furthermore, some overseas surveys have shown that the relationship is also evident for mental illness more specifically. However, research to date has generally not...

This book reviews the methods and findings of legal needs studies in 14 countries.

Public knowledge of rights has been the subject of a number of empirical enquiries over the last decade. In England and Wales, knowledge of rights and its relationship with an individual's capacity to ‘self-help’ and ‘self-represent’ when faced with a civil justice problem has become the subject of renewed attention following changes to legal aid w...

Recession and structural changes to the market for legal services are combining to create a turbulent environment for the solicitors’ profession. The recession has had a significant impact on demand for legal services. Changing fee structures, increased competition, changes to ownership rules and the introduction of new technologies are providing c...

This study is based on a statistical analysis of police custody records. We earlier examined the take-up of legal advice and now turn our attention to the time people spend in police custody. We find that the average time people are detained seems to have risen over recent years and that a number of factors can impact on the length of detention, in...

In common with a number of other developed western states, the UK has seen significant growth of consumer debt over the past three decades. In tandem, there has been an associated increase on the demand for debt advice. Using data from the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey, this article explores how debt problems are experienced acr...

We live our lives against an extensive backdrop of legal rights and responsibilities, yet a growing number of studies indicates low levels of public legal literacy. In the context of opposite-sex cohabitation and marriage law, this study employs new survey data from the United Kingdom to explore, in detail, how many and which people are ignorant of...

The impact of the recent near-collapse of the world banking system continues to be felt within families, with many people facing employment, money and housing problems as a direct result. Using data from a UK household survey, this paper explores the relationship between recession-related ‘justiciable’ life problems and relationship stability. Arou...

The present study, using data from the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey, compares the characteristics of spouses and cohabitants, and aims to examine how relationship type influences the experience of civil law problems generally and problems associated with relationship breakdown in particular. Socio-economic differences between m...

When faced with a broad range of justiciable problems, people seek advice for around half of them, and advice from lawyers on around 13% of occasions. Various factors have been found to link to advice seeking behaviour, but it is commonly recognized that problem type ‘swamps’ other factors. This study draws on an Internet survey of 1,031 respondent...

A number of studies have pointed to a plateauing of athletic performance, with the suggestion that further improvements will need to be driven by revolutions in technology or technique. In the present study, we examine post-war men's Olympic performance in jumping events (pole vault, long jump, high jump, triple jump) to determine whether performan...

Informed by data extracted from 30,921 police electronic custody records, drawn from 44 police stations across four police force areas and including 5153 records of juveniles aged 10 to 17 years, this article examines the take-up of legal advice by children and young people in police stations in England and Wales. There are wide variations in the e...

Internet use and access in the UK has increased rapidly in the last decade, with the concept of ‘information superhighway’ recognised as an axiom of Internet technology. Despite this, few studies have sought to investigate the incidence of use of the Internet as an advice resource outside of the health information arena. With an increasing impetus...

January 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the unequivocal right of police station detainees to obtain advice from a solicitor. However, while this right is a fundamental safeguard to procedural propriety, no large-scale investigation of the rates at which advice is requested or received has been undertaken in over a decade. Thi...

The ability of people to protect their legal rights and hold others to their legal responsibilities is a prerequisite of the rule of law and underpins social justice. The English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS), which replaced the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS) in 2010, provides the only large-scale...

Psychiatric morbidity has been shown to be associated with the increased reporting of a range of social problems involving legal rights (‘rights problems’). Using a validated measure of psychiatric morbidity, this paper explores the relationship between psychiatric morbidity and rights problems and discusses the implications for the delivery of hea...

The 2008 recession presents a double challenge to legal aid. Unemployment extends legal aid eligibility. It is also associated with increased vulnerability to problems involving legal rights, feeding demand for legal services. Job loss, as distinct from unemployment, might be expected to increase vulnerability further still. In this paper, we set o...

People’s ability to use the law to protect their rights and hold others to their responsibilities is crucial to ensuring fairness before the law, bringing about social justice and addressing social exclusion. The ‘Continuous’ English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS), conducted between 2006 and 2009, examines this in detail. This rep...

The following report uses three years of data from the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS), a face-to-face household survey of people’s experience of and response to rights problems, to examine respondents who reported problems associated with unmanageable debt and financial difficulty. The research was commissioned by the Mone...

Purpose: Concerns about expenditure on legal aid in England and Wales have led to greater focus on 'value for money' and increased strategic targeting of resources. To inform targeting, the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey has been used to investigate the relative severity of different civil justice problem types. Thus, the survey...

It is 90 years since legislation introduced a right for women to practice as solicitors in England and Wales, yet women still comprise just 24 per cent of partners in private practice. In this paper we employ data derived from Law Society reports from the past 22 years to model past and future growth of women’s participation in the solicitors’ prof...

As with general morbidity, psychiatric morbidity has been linked to an array of social problems, with interest in those links heightened by the noted vulnerability of those with mental illness and the cost of mental illness to the economy. Legal rights have a bearing upon many social problems. This study, based on data drawn from surveys of 2,628 a...

Despite limited research on access to advice services, it has long been assumed that access is related to geographic proximity [e.g. Blacksell, M., 1990. Social Justice and access to legal services: a geographic perspective. Geoforum 21 (4), 489–502]. The current study uses data from the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey, a large-sc...

Over recent years there has been increasing policy concern in the UK about whether citizens are equipped with sufficient legal ‘know-how’. In January 2006, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, now Ministry of Justice, announced a Public Legal Education and Support Task Force to develop and promote the case for a national strategy. This comes...

There is considerable evidence of links between social and health problems. Some of these links involve social problems that can be addressed through civil legal process, and may be described as civil-law problems. Various initiatives have been implemented around the world to link health and legal advice services to promote better health and justic...

Experience of civil justice problems has been shown to be linked to long-term illness or disability and more recently, specifically to mental health. Studies have also highlighted the potential for stress-related ill health to directly result from the experience of a range of civil justice problems. This study explores further the relationship betw...

A randomized trial was conducted to assess whether the offer of advice to those experiencing debt problems and who had yet to obtain any formal advice, had a positive impact on their financial and general circumstances. The participants were drawn from 16 Jobcentres (welfare offices) in 13 areas of England and Wales. In all, 402 participants were i...

Criminal justice processes target a limited range of ‘crimes’ or ‘harms’ to the exclusion of many others. Whilst political and public policy attention is often focused on procedures and processes, there is also great value in considering broader issues of social justice across a spectrum of activities that extend beyond the restricted scope of crim...

The incidence of problems involving rights is linked closely to social exclusion. We have shown previously that a part of this is that incidence is linked to long-term illness/disability. The prevalence of mental illness and associated public cost mean that potential links between rights problems and mental illness may be particularly pronounced. I...

In Autumn 2004 the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) commissioned the Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC) to investigate the broad impact of debt advice. The resulting Impact of Debt Advice Research Project looked to establish the impact of debt advice on people’s lives. The project involved four studies; a follow-up study of advice age...

BACKGROUND: Evidence of associations between social problems and morbidity supports a broad approach to service provision in general practice. Some social problems linked with morbidity involve people’s rights. They can be mitigated through the provision of advice about people’s rights. Without advice, people are often in a poor position to make in...

People’s ability to use the law to protect their rights and hold others to their responsibilities is crucial to bringing about social justice and addressing social exclusion. The English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS) examines this in detail. This report describes the main findings from the 2006 interviews for the English and Wels...

This summary report presents findings from the 2004 English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS); a survey of people’s experience of and response to 18 broad types of civil law problem. In particular, it sets out the experience of the youngest respondents: those between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. Broader findings from the survey c...

The work of defence lawyers in civil litigation has been neglected by law and society studies. Research on personal injury cases, in particular, has usually focused on the alleged failure of legal systems to compensate plaintiffs as fully and as quickly as they believe proper. The defence lawyer is conventionally portrayed as a pettifogger in the c...

This paper examines social and demographic predictors of debt problems, whether debt problems tend to occur in combination with other problems and which people tend to experience long- rather than short-term debt. Data were extracted from a survey of 5,611 adults' experiences of civil justice problems, throughout England and Wales. Being in receipt...

Study Objective: Design: A randomized trial of the offer of debt advice to persons experiencing debt problems who had yet to obtain any formal advice. Setting: 16 Jobcentres in 13 areas of England and Wales. Participants: 402 participants were included in the trial at its outset. 234 participants remained in the trial at 20-week follow-up. Main...

This article investigates the utility of the term ‘institutional racism’, using a study of the experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic [BME] people within the civil justice ‘system’ in England and Wales. The study is based on the results of the Legal Services Research Centre's Periodic Survey of Justiciable Problems, detailing 5,611 respondents’ e...

Combating social exclusion has become a priority target for many governments and was a key factor in the establishment of the Legal Services Commission (LSC) and the Community Legal Service (CLS) in England and Wales in April 2000. This study aims to assess whether socially excluded groups within the general population are more likely to suffer jus...

This article sets out the findings of a study of 280 publicly‐funded private law children cases and associated interviews. It illustrates how both the cost and duration of such cases have increased substantially over the past few years and suggests that this may partly be as a consequence of increasing complexity. However, the article also illustra...

The cost of administering and funding legal aid in England and Wales is in excess of two billion pounds. A recent study of private law family cases highlights how the current scheme tends to focus narrowly on particular legal issues and creates incentives for litigation rather than informal negotiation. Survey findings of legal need help to highlig...

In the United Kingdom, recognition of the links between social and health problems has led to government initiatives such as health action zones. The principles of civil law apply to many types of social problem, and the civil justice system provides one means through which they can be tackled. However, little research has been undertaken into the...