Being in Favour of Reform, Just Not Change
To a hammer, everything is a nail
There is an old aphorism that “To a hammer, everything is a nail”. The aphorism reflects the centrality of perspective. Where you stand very much affects what you can (or want to) see.
I think that Professor Julie Macfarlane makes this point in the context of discussions about access to justice. Professor Macfarlane has carefully researched and thoughtfully written about the reality that most family law litigants don’t use lawyers. She speaks about this issue with lawyers yet, as she seems to say, the discussions with lawyers about this topic are, at best, stilted. I suspect that this is because lawyers see the access to justice issue from their professional perspective, are rightly proud of the work that they do for clients and have difficulty processing the access to justice issue from any perspective other than their own.
So the main point of this column is to try to address the A2J question from a different perspective and to use that perspective to look at the solutions offered.
Middle Income Access to Justice
In 2012, Professors Trebilcock, Duggan and Sossin published Middle Income Access to Justice. The book drew on 23 surveys of the public’s experience with justiciable problems undertaken across 13 countries.
The importance of this approach is that it looks at justiciable problems experienced by the public rather than looking at what lawyers do. The punch line is that there is a difference. Lawyers know what lawyers do. Lawyers fairly believe that lawyers do good things. So lawyers don’t see problems. To a hammer, everything is a nail.
The 2009 Ontario Civil Legal Needs Project is examined in the book by Professors Baxter, Trebilcock and Yoon. They examine the data seeking to determine what predicts the decision to seek legal advice. In other words, when do the members of the public go to lawyers for help? The answer is that it is the problem type significantly predicts whether a lawyer is consulted. And there are four problem types that predict the involvement of lawyers namely criminal, family, wills and powers of attorney and real estate. While not significant in a statistical sense, personal injury comes a close fifth on the numbers.
That the public goes to lawyers for criminal, family, wills and powers of attorney, real estate problems and personal injury problems should come as no surprise to lawyers. This is pretty much exactly what lawyers say that they do for individuals. In 2005, the Law Society of Upper Canada Sole Practitioner and Small Firm Task Force reported that lawyers in sole practice and in small firms generally represent individuals (77%) and that these lawyers practice real estate (46%), civil litigation (39%), wills, estates, trusts (35%), corporate and commercial (33%) and family (26%).
What do lawyers do? What legal needs exist?
Given that the public says that it uses lawyers for criminal, family, wills and powers of attorney, real estate problems and personal injury problems and that this is what lawyers say they do, we can have a strong degree of confidence about the nature of the practice of law for individuals.
Solicitors do real estate work, assist with wills, estates and trusts and also do some corporate and commercial work (presumably for small businesses). Litigators do criminal, family and personal injury litigation. Some lawyers of course do solicitors work as well as litigation.
That these are the categories of work done by lawyers makes obvious sense. Members of the public with significant assets use solicitors to help them with real estate transactions and in dealing with inheritances made or received. Members of the public who have trouble with the criminal law, who are in failed family relationships or who seek compensation for significant personal injury use litigators.
But what lawyers don’t see and cannot appreciate is that this amounts to a relatively small portion of the justiciable problems experienced by members of the public. According to the 2009 Ontario Civil Legal Needs Project, the public only seek legal assistance in respect of 11.7% of justiciable events.
Said simply, the public use lawyers for less than 15% of the justiciable events experienced by them. Said another way, what is 100% of lawyers’ practices is less than 15% of the public’s legal needs.
What about the other 85%?
Of the over 85% of justiciable problems that don’t attract legal attention, approximately 60% are consumer problems, money/debt and employment problems. A smallish proportion is in respect of discrimination, housing, hospital treatment/release, welfare benefits, disability benefits, immigration and other matters.
Should we care about the 85% of legal needs that are not addressed by lawyers? For the legal philosopher, the answer must be yes. As Professors Trebilcock, Duggan and Sossin put it “Most conceptions of the rule of law assume equality before the law and hence access to law or the justice system as one of its fundamental predicates”. And as Professor Gillian Hadfield argues, it seems quite wrong that the businesses on the other side of these justiciable events have expert legal assistance while the public does not. For the Law Society, the answer must also be yes given its public interest mandate. For individual solicitors and litigators who are struggling to do a good job and make a decent living, it is not surprising that this 85% is not on their radar.
The next question is why are lawyers used for less than 15% of legal needs? This is not well examined but I think the reason is clear. Lawyers are small business people who sell their time and expertise to help members of the public solve their problems. Taking into account the incomes reasonably required by university-trained highly intelligent professionals and their overheads, the fees for lawyers solving problems are measured in the hundreds of dollars per hour of time spent.
Real estate transactions and issues with inheritances are economically significant enough that the cost of a lawyer is justified. Personal injury claims work economically where the compensation likely attainable is large enough to justify legal fees.
Criminal law and family law are more problematic. Criminal law problems undoubtedly require legal assistance but accused persons often cannot afford the fees. As a society, we (mostly) address the importance of criminal law problems and the inability of those with criminal law problems to pay for legal assistance through legal aid.
Family law is the problem child from the lawyers perspective. The issues are difficult enough to justify legal assistance. People often cannot simply choose to ignore the family law issues whether because custody of children is at issue, support is needed or assets are being divided. Most people don’t use lawyers for family law problems. Not because they don’t want to but rather because they can’t afford to pay what turns out to be a large and unpredictable cost.
As for the remaining 85%, the fees of the legal expert are out of proportion with the size of the problem to be solved and, unlike criminal or family law, the public isn’t forced into the legal system.
What to do about the 85%?
So what to do? We could ignore the 85% and hope that no one notices. This seems to be the current approach.
We could hope that society comes to see these legal needs as being as compelling as health or education and provide legal aid funding. There are two problems with this approach. First, it won’t happen. Second and more important is that it is wrong to require society to pay for solutions the cost of which is disproportionate to the problem addressed. Even people with sufficient resources generally do not use lawyers for these problems because of the cost benefit equation. The business model of the small business lawyer does not provide an efficient way to address the 85% whether privately funded or funded by legal aid.
We could (and in Ontario have) allow regulated paralegals to address a portion of the 85%. While the business model is essentially the same, paralegals charge less and so can efficiently address some of the 85%. Small claims court work is a good example. But the advocacy provided by regulated paralegals solves at best a small part of the 85% puzzle.
There are two remaining choices. Neither will be attractive to practising lawyers. The first is to end the monopoly. If lawyers and regulated paralegals can’t efficiently address over 85% of legal problems then it makes sense simply to get out of the way. It makes no sense to prohibit anyone but a member of the Law Society from doing work that members of the Law Society don’t do.
The alternative choice is to encourage innovation by regulatory liberalization permitting other ways of delivering legal services. Having small businesses spend expert professional time on problems is not the only way to address problems. Technology and business processes can provide lower cost solutions. Larger businesses with scope and scale can deliver services in a way that the small business professional cannot.
My preference is to allow new ways of providing legal services under regulatory supervision. I am uncomfortable with the deregulation alternative. But I don’t see how doing nothing is acceptable.
Returning to the 15% (actually the 11.7%)
Criminal, family, wills and powers of attorney, real estate and personal injury problems make up the 11.7% of justiciable problems for which the public turn to lawyers for assistance. These are problems that lawyers see and seek to solve for their clients.
For criminal law, there is a clear issue of access to justice. But the answer is mostly, if not entirely, proper legal aid to ensure that competent criminal lawyers are engaged to protect fundamental constitution rights.
For real estate transactions, there is no reason to think that access to legal services is an issue. While there are likely efficiencies available through new ways of providing legal services, the issues in real estate law aren’t really about access.
For wills and powers of attorney, the issue is a bit more complicated. For those with property of sufficient value, the current system no doubt works reasonably well in terms of access. As in real estate, services could likely be more efficiently. But, it is also clear that the majority of Canadians do not have a will nor a power of attorney. For the majority of Canadians, wills and powers of attorney are in the 85% not the 15%. But lawyers do not see this as an issue because lawyers ably serve the minority of the public who have sufficient assets in their estate or a sufficient inheritance to justify paying lawyers’ fees.
For personal injury law, the contingent fee substantially addresses the access issue. However, the small business professional model limits the risk that can be taken by personal injury lawyers. With limited capital and limited volume, personal injury lawyers inevitably will tend to take on claims that are most certain to pay off. And it is common that clients are required to fund disbursements which may or may not be affordable.
The greatest access problem in the 15% is in family law. Family law litigants often start off with a lawyer but then try to represent themselves because legal fees are large and unpredictable and the amount of the family assets do not justify the legal fees. Professor Macfarlane’s research indicates that 70% of family law litigants are unrepresented. It seems that many start in the 15% but most end up in the 85%. Family law lawyers do not have the volume of business or the working capital to work on a fixed or predictable fee basis. The hourly rate legal model is unable to reduce price without reducing lawyers incomes. Technology and process innovation are not brought to bear because of lack of investment capital and expertise.
Improving access to justice in family law is complicated. Part of the answer may be allowing paralegals to do some of the advocacy work that is no longer being done by lawyers. Part of the answer may be in reducing the complexity of the process by which family law disputes are resolved. But there is reason to think that allowing evolution of business structures can be part of the solution as well. In Australia, firms which have taken advantage of access to external capital are now providing fixed fee family law services. As well, the well-capitalized Australian firms (e.g. Shine Lawyers, Slater & Gordon) fund disbursements in personal injury matters as well as fees.
To return to the beginning, it seems that it can be difficult for lawyers to appreciate the access issues that exist in our legal system. This may be because our perspective is inherently limited and we are rightly proud of that which we do. There is also a natural fear of change and, for some, a tendency to exaggerate how well things are going and how badly things could be if the status quo is not maintained. In my view, there is a compelling need for reform to advance access to justice. The scholarly thinking (e.g. Hadfield, Semple) and the actual evidence shows benefit, not harm, from allowing new ways of providing legal services. We actually need to change.
It is eye-opening to see the results of these surveys of A2J issues laid out so clearly.
I was struck in particular by these sentences: “We could hope that society comes to see these legal needs as being as compelling as health or education and provide legal aid funding. There are two problems with this approach. First, it won’t happen.”
There have been times when neither health nor education were drivers of public policy in Canada, and law was the preoccupation. Investing in law requires a healthy attention span, and examples of such attention exist right now, only not so much in Canada. Post-handover Hong Kong is an example of a community that chose to invest heavily in its civil justice system and in ADR as a combined infrastructure project. New York City chose community policing. On #PinkShirtDay, let us reflect whether anti-bullying will be Canada’s issue for bridging health, education and law.
Claiming that lawyers have a monopoly obscures the reality. We do not have a monopoly as that word is usually understood. We have a monopoly on the deliver of certain legal services, that’s true, but inside that monopoly is fierce competition for each lawyer’s share of the public’s need for those services. Further, we have to compete with such things as will kits, the right to do holograph wills, and so on. In areas where there are no competitors other than lawyers, such as handling the purchase and sale of land, the competition among lawyers is as fierce as any market out there. Real estate fees have not risen against inflation in 30 years. Title insurance premiums increased nearly ten-fold. Government costs have exceeded inflation.
Attempts to take lawyers out of real estate (i.e., to replace them with giant corporations) always result in two things – a badly harmed quality of titles and a much higher cost to the public. This has been proven to be the case in every jurisdiction where it has occurred. Real estate lawyers are extremely efficient because the profit margins per file are so low. Real estate fees are very low, far lower than real estate commissions, government costs, moving expenses, the appliances, and so on. Considering that title insurance is essentially a sick joke, any cost of title insurance is a waste of public money. The most cost-effective services the real estate public gets are from lawyers. Attempts to sacrifice real estate lawyers on a faked altar of access to justice are doomed to produce the twin evils listed above.
Wills and powers of attorney are also very inexpensive. In terms of value for money from the legal profession, they cannot be beaten. Almost the entire population can afford them. They spend more on all kinds of other goods and services that do not provide them and their families with the cost savings (in estate administration both while alive and after death) that wills and powers of attorney do. It is not the case that the vast majority of adults do not have wills. Most studies indicate that about half do not. One reason many adults do not have them is that they have been bamboozled by the media into thinking that all legal services are expensive because whenever the media rant on about how expensive lawyers are, they always use litigation cases as their examples, and solicitors get unfairly tarred with that brush. Another reason is the natural human tendency to postpone dealing with one’s own mortality until it starts to loom. They can certainly afford wills and powers of attorney, but they do not want to think about them yet. Cost is not the barrier. If we want to increase the number of adults who have wills and PoAs, then the answer is public education as to the tremendous value provided by lawyers when delivering these services.
Selling out the independence of the legal profession on trumped up fake access issues is simply wrong (and Malcolm does say, in effect, that he does not think that, for example, real estate fees are a cause for public concern).
Focussing on wills and such simply diverts attention away from the real barrier to access to justice – the time and cost of all litigation. Absent from Malcolm’s list was commercial litigation. Litigation, whether criminal, family, personal injury, or commercial, is ridiculously expensive. It is the barrier that dwarfs by far all other real and alleged barriers combined. If the Law Society were truly sincere about helping the public overcome the real barriers, it would focus almost all its talents and resources on the high cost of family, personal injury and commercial litigation, and the rest on public education.
(I feel that criminal litigation is an exceptional case that should be handled separately. The problem there is that the accused is up against the State, which can, with its bottomless resources that can, if the Crown so chooses, utterly ruin you. You cannot ask someone to work forever for free on behalf of an accused if the government causes endless work to be needed. That is why greater legal aid for criminal law is essential.)
Malcolm believes that big entities will somehow deliver cheaper services to the public. In many fields they do, but in many others they do not. Whenever big entities have pushed their way into small firm solicitor services, the public has been badly hurt in every way with the title insurance experience in the US being a prime example (they took over most of the conveyancing and promptly set about screwing the public – “a dysfunctional industry in which the public pays too much” according to the government of the State of California).
In the real estate world, real estate companies charge vastly more than the lawyers because a handful of companies control that market and have engineered the market to their benefit. That is why in Canada real estate commissions are 5% while in Scotland where the big companies as yet are not big players the commissions are 1.5% (still a cost that is far higher than what the lawyers charge).
Many of the so-called unmet legal needs are small problems that, while they may seem important to the person at the time, simply do not justify engaging a coterie of advisers to resolve when looked at objectively or even by the person later with the perspective of time and distance. Even if you can find non-lawyer advisers to take it on, the cost to the taxpayer, to society in general, is not worth it.
As for unmet legal needs that absolutely should be addressed, look no farther that the extortionate cost of litigation. Bring down the time and cost of litigation and hordes of new clients will storm into the offices of the barristers. But I can tell the readers of this blog that there is precious little attention, time, talent and resources being focussed on that by Convocation. No surprise there. It is heavily dominated by barristers. Do not blame them as individuals. They are truly a wonderful group of men and women, but they are human. They do not see what others see (or they discount it) for entirely human reasons, some of which Malcolm himself talks about.
Some of the supporters of ABS accuse people like me of self-interest, protectionism and so on, but people like me are pointing out to them the compelling evidence of expensive harm to the public in other jurisdictions when solicitors are erased from the services. We solicitors know what we are talking about. It is the non-solicitors who do not understand our environment, and too often too many of them seem, collectively (Malcolm is an exception), not to want to.
I know, and Justice Brown knows, and many other people know, that it is entirely possible, by amending the system, to cut the time spent on, and therefore the cost of, litigation files in half with no loss of justice. The people who do not seem to know this are most of the practicing barristers.
When I talk to barristers about putting in place a system that would cut the time spent on their litigation files in half, they look at me as though I’m from Neptune. When I claim that, while their files would be completed in half the time but that they would have twice as many files (thus, the same annual revenue), they stare off into space, too worried that my prediction would not come true and their incomes would fall. They are not willing to take the chance of working toward a far more efficient litigation system. Better to claim that $200 (half to overhead) wills are too expensive.
Instead, they offer up “solutions” that could devastate the small-firm solicitor bar. Instead, they claim that the most cost-effective legal services available from the bar are the very services that should be attacked and held up as barriers. Instead, they claim that by selling ownership of the legal profession to venture capitalists that somehow greater “innovations” will be achieved than would otherwise be achieved. Nonsense. They attack lawyers for not being innovative enough. Nonsense. We have been extremely innovative, embracing technology, improving our web presence, communication skills, constantly looking for ways to be more efficient and findable by prospective clients, etc. If there are other useful innovations out there, then we will adopt them. Let other jurisdictions sell the independence of their bar. Let us carry on in our sensible way and adopt only the most beneficial innovations, if any, that pop up elsewhere.
By the way, the link given by Malcolm for the fixed fee for family law services is to Slater and Gordon. On their website, the fixed fees are for stages. They are careful to indicate that the fee may not be able to be fixed, say for the trial, until much closer to the later stage. Prove to me that Slater and Gordon, a gigantic firm raking in millions, are not making the same money they would be making under any other billing model. I would also like to know how many clients they turn away who cannot pay their fixed fees, and I would like to know how many clients, having agreed to fixed fees during the early stages, are horrified at what the fixed fees will be during the later stages when it is too late to change law firms other than at great, start over, expense.
Malcolm, this is terrific work. I agree 100% about the perspective problem. The way I describe it is that the existing legal market occupies the visible light spectrum: lawyers respond to it because they see it. Put another way, there is no “access” problem for this visible market: if you have both the money to afford and the inclination to retain a lawyer, your needs will be met.
The latent market is outside lawyers’ visible light spectrum, and as you point out, it’s vast in comparison with the “patent” market. It consists of (a) people with legal issues who can’t afford a lawyer, (b) people with legal issues whose value is less than what lawyers can or want to work for, and (c) people who don’t even realize that their problems are in some way legal and that a legal solution might be available to them.
This market — the invisible, the ultra-violet , the 85% of the iceberg beneath the waterline, call it what you like — this market and its growing refusal to accept the status quo represent both the the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity to the legal profession right now. I agree that regulatory liberalization is an important first step to dealing with this, but I fear it’s a step that would have been effective had it been taken 10 years ago. It’s possible that ship may already have sailed, and that the only one left at the dock involves ending lawyers’ monopoly.
Either way, what’s rapidly coming to an end is the time when decisions about these matters emanated from the legal profession. I suspect that the most wide-ranging and far-reaching changes coming to the legal market will be applied not by us, but to us.
This is an outstanding post! I think there’s a possible point of consensus between Malcolm’s post and Bradley Wright’s comments. They might agree that the epicentre of the access to justice problem is what the socio-legal scholars call “personal plight” matters.
Personal plight matters are disputes, with legal dimensions, which are predominantly experienced by individuals and very small businesses. Criminal, personal injury, and family law are all personal plight practices. While technology and competition have made solicitors’ “personal business” legal services (wills, real estate, incorporation, etc.) cheaper and more accessible in recent years, the same is not true for personal plight legal needs. Enhancing A2J in personal plight matters will in my view require both regulatory liberalization (per Mercer) and cost-reducing procedural reform (per Wright).
I think this ship is still in the harbour for the legal profession. And Jordan’s absolutely right that this is a moment of enormous opportunity. If we catch the ship in time, offering accessible personal plight legal services to people of modest means represents a huge market opportunity for the next generation of lawyers.
Interesting discussion. Does anyone foresee if and/or how the alternative legal services that have been suggested in the comments going to affect pro bono and legal aid services? Is there a possibility that these services will see reductions and further cuts — has Australia experienced any of this?
Some of the ‘personal plight’ cases have been caught (for the past 40 years) by legal clinics, who deal in batches with ‘poverty law’ – but which are often systemic legal issues like housing, social benefits and the like. Supporting clinics can be a way of providing for legal assistance for the 85% (or whatever) of justiciable issues not of interest to the private practising lawyer.
That won’t solve all of them, of course. Simpler or more accessible laws, focus on plain language in public sector documents and other administrative measures can also help, where the issues involve the state in some way (including state laws affecting private-to-private dealings). There were lots of studies in the 90s about the economic impact of plain language documents (saving huge amounts to private actors as well as to public offices because fewer errors needed correcting) – what happened to that wisdom?
And the laws don’t get simplified in part because no politician ever got re-elected for the improvements he or she managed to make to the [name of 19th century statute here]. But a broader understanding of A2J would recognize that the justice ‘system’ is a rule of law system, and improving the rule of law by making the law work in the interest of people’s ability to live in harmony with each other (and to avoid or settle disharmonies) is part of the rule of law.
Indeed it’s peace, order and good government. Where have we heard that phrase before? It’s the aim of all law, to a significant extent. The road to solving more of the justiciable problems does not lead only to the private law office, though as noted above, it could lead there more often if certain changes, or reforms, were to come.
This is a terrific post and a great discussion. Thank you Malcolm for kicking this off. I would like to going to weigh in on just one of the many issues but a central one to the conversation I think – the public/ private responsibility for “personal plight”cases (thank you Noel for this nomenclature).
I am increasingly convinced that public legal services – including but not limited to our clinics – simply cannot shoulder the burden of those with “personal plight” issues and without the resources to afford full representation. If we harken back 40 years or so (as evoked by John) to a time when public legal services were more generously funded, and when a middle income Canadian would sooner cash in their RRSP or sell their car than face the prospect of going to court alone – then our clinics, the duty counsel system and the subsidizing of private legal services for eligible individuals was able to make some dent in the mountain of need out there. However, the days of generous funding and terrified consumers are over. I agree with Malcolm that we cannot expect funding of legal services to the same extent as either education or health.
Anyone who spends time in the family courts these days knows that the math here is, well, overwhelming. The number of (for instance) family duty counsel one might need in the (for example) Brampton or Jarvis courthouses on any one day in order to take care of the needs of all the unrepresented parties appearing there – well, it simply boggles the mind. And that’s just the courthouse SWAT squad – what about assistance for people at the entry point?
I have some ideas (which I have blogged about before so will not repeat here) about ways in which we could use our public legal services dollars a bit more efficiently and effectively. But they will never be enough. I believe that the only way we can address the A2J needs of the personal plighters is to change the way that private legal services are offered. That includes deregulation, increasing access to para-legals, changing billing structures, and adjusting and diversifying the types of assistance that private lawyers offer clients other than full representation. And I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these changes would make sense for commercial clients also.
I also want to return to a theme that runs through my work, which is the need to figure out better and faster routes to finding just settlement short of complex, protracted and arcane court procedures. This is the only way that we can ultimately hope to meet the needs of the A2J crisis. That means (e.g.) more resources and energy (including refocusing legal education) for court and community-based mediation, judge-facilitated settlement and simpler evaluative mechanisms that chip away at contentious issues.
LSUC beware! Legal Aid Ontario’s (LAO’s) 77 legal clinics–the biggest string of law offices in Canada–could easily be converted to an expanded version of socialized law, which, with LAO LAW’s research and downloadable materials support services, plus governments’ strong campaigning for purchasing legal services insurance, would enable those clinics to out-perform private practice law firms by means of much better convenience and pricing in obtaining legal services. That’s the strategy used very successfully by the fast food industry.
Canada’s law societies should use the same strategy to capture that 85% of unserviced legal problems for the legal profession, by creating the lawyer-equivalent of the family doctor specialist, who channels work to all of the rest of the medical profession and infrastructure. The ABS alternatives (corporate ownership of law firms & non-lawyer businesses providing legal services by employing lawyers from failed and diminished law firms), mean turning most of the legal profession into employees, and under intense “produce profits pressure,” instead of remaining as owner-operators of their own law firms. Also, that will reduce law societies’ now exclusive control of the regulation of the legal profession because, inter alia they themselves will be subject to 3rd party regulators. Therefore it will greatly weaken our law societies’ claim that they should be the regulators of non-lawyer providers of legal services, the subject of a December LSBC task force report.
Instead, lower the cost and price of legal services by creating more support services like LAO LAW, and more varieties of support services by creating more specialist lawyers, and increase the convenience of obtaining those legal services. Create more specialist lawyers such as the “records management law” lawyer, the e-discovery lawyer, and the “family lawyer” specialist who does the legal services counterpart of the channelling and triage work done by the family doctor, as so on. Then, lawyers will have more work than they can handle, instead of facing a shrinking profession, & Jordon Furlong’s “agile lawyer’s” existence of poorly paid piece work, and Professor (U. Windsor) Julie MacFarlane’s rising percentages of self-represented litigants, and worse predicted to come–e.g., the CBA predicts that over the next ten years, the middle-sized law office will probably disappear. And smaller law offices are more vulnerable than that to making ABS’s come true. It doesn’t have to be that way, unless our law societies continue to do nothing about the unaffordable legal services problem causing the majority of the population to be a legally dysfunctional society, and Canada no longer a constitutional democracy. If ABS’s can successfully innovate affordable legal services, so can law societies. The LSUC’s Report of the Treasurer’s Advisory Group on Access to Justice Working Group (for debate in Convocation on Feb. 27th) shows that finally, they have enough fear to make it happen. — Ken Chasse, member, LSUC & LSBC.
Also, CanLII, providing all lawyers in Canada the support services that LAO LAW provides for Ontario’s legal aid lawyers, would be the most effective part of the solution for the unaffordable legal services problem. See my Slaw post of Oct. 24/13: “CanLII as the Solution to the Unaffordable Legal Services Problem.” — Ken Chasse