Access to Justice and Legal Aid

This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines. As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need.
The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way the law now operates in the twenty-first century. This book is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in criminal and civil justice, access to justice, the provision of legal assistance and legal aid.

1. Access to Justice and Legal Aid Cuts: A Mismatch of Concepts in the Contemporary Australian and British Legal Landscapes
2. Challenges Facing the Australian Legal Aid System
3. Rhyme and Reason in the Uncertain Development of Legal Aid in Australia
4. The Rise and Decline of Criminal Legal Aid in England and Wales
5. A View from the Bench: A Judicial Perspective on Legal Representation, Court Excellence and Therapeutic Jurisprudence
6. Face-to-interface Communication: Accessing Justice by Video Link from Prison
7. The Rise of 'DIY' Law: Implications for Legal Aid
8. Community Lawyers, Law Reform and Systemic Change: Is the End in Sight?
9. What if There Is Nowhere to Get Advice?
10. The End of 'Tea and Sympathy'? The Changing Role of Voluntary Advice Services in Enabling 'Access to Justice'
11. Reasoning a Human Right to Legal Aid
12. Cuts to Civil Legal Aid and the Identity Crisis in Lawyering: Lessons from the Experience of England and Wales
13. Access to What? LASPO and Mediation
14. Insights into Inequality: Women's Access to Legal Aid in Victoria
15. Indigenous People and Access to Justice in Civil and Family Law
16. Austerity and Justice in the Age of Migration