This chapter sets the context for assessing justice as a public service across countries. Building on the OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems, it highlights the importance of justice systems responding to evolving needs and expectations against a backdrop of rapid technological, societal and economic change. It explains how the report brings together comparative evidence on justice outcomes, government policies and system characteristics through the OECD Measurement Framework for People-Centred Justice Systems. The chapter also presents the main findings of the report and outlines priorities for reform and policy recommendations.
Justice as a Public Service
Delivering Better Outcomes
Abstract
Access to justice is fundamental to the rule of law and to the ability of people, businesses and communities to participate fully in society and the economy. In practice, it is experienced through everyday problems: resolving a family or housing dispute, addressing difficulties at work, challenging a public decision, protecting a livelihood or enforcing an agreement. Whether these problems can be prevented or resolved fairly, effectively and within a reasonable time shapes people’s lives, confidence in public institutions and businesses’ ability to operate, invest and plan with certainty.
Over the past decade, a growing body of evidence has broadened understanding of what effective justice systems need to deliver. The sound administration, independence and integrity of courts and other justice institutions are indispensable. At the same time, research on legal needs has demonstrated the importance of looking beyond institutional activity to whether people and businesses can recognise their justice problems, understand their rights and options, obtain appropriate assistance and ultimately reach fair and effective resolution (OECD/Open Society Foundations, 2019[1]). Many justice problems never reach a court or other formal justice institution, while others intersect with housing, employment, health, social protection, public administration or commercial activity. This has reinforced the need to consider justice from the perspective of the entire justice journey, rather than primarily through the procedures and institutions that people may encounter along the way.
These developments have progressively placed people-centred justice at the core of efforts to make the rule of law effective in practice. A people-centred approach asks how the justice system as a whole responds to the problems experienced by people, businesses and communities and how evidence on their needs, capabilities, experiences and outcomes can inform the design and continuous improvement of justice policies and services. This perspective is equally relevant to businesses, including SMEs, which may face different types of legal needs but similarly depend on accessible, predictable and effective justice services for resolving problems.
The OECD Recommendation of the Council on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems, adopted in 2023, consolidated this evolution. It defines access to justice as the ability of people, businesses and communities to prevent conflicts and obtain effective, fair, equitable and timely resolution of their legal and justice-related needs. It calls for seamless, efficient, integrated, sustainable, resilient and user-centred justice pathways comprising the formal and informal, pre-court and court mechanisms and services that people actually use to prevent and resolve justice problems [OECD/LEGAL/0498]. The Recommendation builds on more than a decade of OECD work on access to justice, including policy dialogue through the OECD Global Roundtables on Equal Access to Justice, as well as the broader international momentum generated by the 2019 Justice for All report.
People-centred justice forms part of a broader OECD understanding of a responsive rule of law: one in which rights and safeguards are not only formally established but can be effectively exercised in practice. This matters for individuals, but also for the wider functioning of societies and economies. Accessible and effective justice contributes to legal certainty, predictable enforcement, protection of rights, accountability for public and private actors and confidence in institutions (OECD, 2025[2]). These conditions are important for investment, economic activity and social cohesion. This report is intended to be read alongside OECD work on judicial and justice governance, trust, integrity and anti-corruption, and institutional effectiveness, which examine the safeguards for justice systems to fulfil their constitutional and public-service functions.
This perspective has become particularly important in the wider context in which governments operate. Rapid technological and societal change, demographic shifts, new information ecosystems and the accelerating development of artificial intelligence are changing both the nature of legal needs and people’s expectations of public institutions. At the same time, governments face constrained public finances and persistent challenges to public trust. Public institutions are increasingly expected to deliver better outcomes while safeguarding rights, ensuring accountability and managing growing complexity.
In their Declaration on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy [GOV/PGC/MIN(2022)3], OECD Ministers reaffirmed the importance of public institutions that uphold the rule of law and fundamental freedoms, operate with transparency, integrity and accountability, and remain responsive to changing citizens’ needs and expectations. The OECD’s emerging Government Unstuck agenda reinforces this focus on governments’ capacity to deliver meaningful results for people, reduce unnecessary complexity, strengthen voice and make public institutions more accessible, responsive and capable of adapting to change. These objectives apply directly to justice systems. Approaching justice as a responsive public service provides one way of translating them into practice, while respecting the distinct constitutional roles and independence of justice institutions.
In parallel, the Justice Action Coalition has provided an important platform for translating the international commitment to people-centred justice into action. Established in 2021 following the publication of the flagship Justice for All report (Task Force on Justice, 2019[3]), the Coalition brings together countries and partner organisations seeking to advance equal access to justice and achieve measurable improvements in justice outcomes. Its work has helped sustain political momentum around people-centred justice and has placed particular emphasis on strengthening data and evidence, strategy and innovation, communications and advocacy, and justice financing.
Justice measurement
A characteristic of people-centred justice systems is their focus on understanding their performance from the perspective of people and businesses and their use of data and evidence to inform policy priorities and reforms. This means combining information on institutions, caseloads and processes with evidence on the justice problems people face, their experiences with the pathways and services they use, and the outcomes they achieve. Such evidence can help governments identify unmet needs and unresolved problems, detect disparities between different groups, anticipate demand and direct resources towards areas where they can have the greatest impact. Combined with effective data governance and mechanisms for learning and feedback, it also enables justice systems to assess whether policies and services are achieving their intended objectives and to adapt them over time.
Justice systems generate substantial amounts of information, but data are frequently dispersed across institutions, based on different definitions and methodologies and disconnected from the outcomes that justice policies seek to achieve (Byrom, Piccinin-Barbieri and Wells, 2024[4]). Justice systems can therefore be ‘data-rich but information-poor’. The OECD Measurement Framework for People-Centred Justice Systems seeks to address this challenge by providing a common structure linking three dimensions: government policies and system characteristics; the justice services and interventions through which people address their justice problems; and the outcomes ultimately achieved for people and businesses (de Langen, Teplova and Mulherin, 2026[5]); see Figure 1.1. These connections provide a basis for strengthening indicators, definitions and methodologies and for progressively developing a more coherent evidence base for justice policymaking within and across countries.
This report represents the first cross-country application of this emerging measurement architecture. It brings together internationally comparable evidence on justice outcomes with systematic information on the policies and system characteristics through which countries are implementing the OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems (OECD, 2023[6]). In doing so, it provides a common reference point for countries to take stock of progress, identify areas of relative strength and opportunities for further development, and learn from one another. It also establishes an initial baseline for monitoring implementation over time, from which the OECD and countries can progressively strengthen the indicators and evidence base and track progress towards more effective and people-centred justice systems.
Assessment and recommendations: Justice as a Public Service
The findings of this report point to a clear evolution in how effective justice systems are understood and governed. Across countries, access to justice is increasingly recognised not only as a matter of rights and institutional performance, but as a question of whether the justice system as a whole enables people and businesses to prevent and resolve the problems they encounter fairly, effectively and in ways that allow them to move forward. This implies approaching justice as a public service, while fully safeguarding the constitutional roles, independence and integrity of courts and other justice institutions.
Countries are moving in this direction, but the transition remains incomplete. The report identifies significant innovation across justice systems: stronger policy commitments to people-centred justice; new digital services; more accessible information; specialised and community-based services; greater use of user feedback; and growing attention to data and evidence. Yet these reforms frequently remain concentrated within individual institutions, programmes or channels rather than forming part of a coherent system for addressing people’s justice problems from beginning to end. No country assessed demonstrates equally advanced implementation across all dimensions of the OECD Recommendation, and there is considerable scope for countries to learn from one another.
The outcomes experienced by people reinforce the importance of this system-wide perspective. A median 70% of people whose resolution process had concluded considered their justice problem fully resolved, but this leaves around three in ten without full resolution. Only 60% considered the process fair, while median trust in judges and magistrates was 56%. Justice problems are also consequential: a median 52% of those experiencing a non-trivial justice problem report wider hardship. At the same time, access becomes weaker as people move through the justice journey. While 67% report knowing where to obtain information, only 38% of those needing assistance and advice obtain it and 42% of those needing a dispute resolution mechanism access one. The principal policy challenge is therefore not simply to increase the supply of individual justice services, but to ensure that the different parts of the system work together so that people can move from recognising a problem to obtaining suitable support and, ultimately, a fair and effective resolution.
These findings also demonstrate why institutional performance indicators alone cannot provide a sufficient picture of the state of the justice system. A case can be processed efficiently without resolving the underlying problem. Conversely, people may resolve problems without using a court or another formal institution. High rates of resolution do not necessarily coincide with high levels of perceived fairness or trust. Similarly, providing information does not ensure that people who require personalised assistance receive it, and access to a dispute resolution mechanism does not demonstrate that the resulting process is affordable, timely or effective. A more mature approach to justice policy therefore needs to connect institutional performance with people’s needs, awareness, pathways, experiences and outcomes.
At the policy level, when it comes to securing commitment at the highest level of government, a people-centred purpose and culture in the justice system, and the delivery of justice as a public service, are increasingly reflected across countries. Some countries articulate this through explicit vision and mission statements, others through justice strategies, while elsewhere the commitment is operationalised through specific reforms or action plans. However, no country articulated people-centred objectives as a fully system-wide purpose extending across government and society. Similarly, while access to justice is strongly endorsed across all countries, shared and measurable goals, together with joint monitoring of progress towards them, remain underdeveloped. Monitoring of institution-specific goals is more common, but objectives directly linked to outcomes for people are still rare. All countries also report at least some measures aimed at addressing discrimination or the needs of specific groups, yet these are often concentrated on training and awareness-raising initiatives and are only rarely supported by systematic analysis of differences in justice experiences and outcomes across population groups. Overall, the findings suggest that the next step is to move from broad commitment to a more coherent system-wide approach, with clearer shared objectives, stronger outcome-oriented monitoring and greater use of data and evidence to assess whether justice is being delivered equitably in practice.
A major constraint is the evidence available to governments. Justice institutions generate substantial administrative data on caseloads, processing times, backlogs and expenditure, but these data largely capture people and problems that have already reached formal services. Only four of the 27 countries examined in detail conduct regular legal needs surveys, and none was assessed as having established a comprehensive set of people-centred variables covering needs, pathways, experiences and outcomes across the justice sector. This limits governments’ ability to identify unmet needs, understand where people disengage, assess disparities between population groups and direct resources towards interventions likely to have the greatest impact.
Legal capability is receiving greater attention in justice policy and service design, but its systematic assessment remains limited. Few countries regularly examine whether people have the knowledge, confidence and practical ability to recognise and address justice problems, or whether the complexity of services and procedures is appropriately matched to those capabilities. Likewise, evidence on what contributes to effective and sustainable problem resolution is not yet routinely incorporated into service design. Although some practices draw on behavioural science, psychology, conflict management and other disciplines to improve the capacity of justice services to effectively resolve problems and provide fair outcomes, the challenge that persists is moving from pilots towards a more systematic application.
Accessibility is more than the formal availability of a service. Over the past decade, the centralisation of physical services and rapid expansion of digital channels have generated important efficiencies but may reduce the accessibility for rural communities and for people facing digital, physical or socioeconomic constraints. Most countries assess geographic accessibility in some form, although approaches remain uneven and digital channels do not consistently compensate for reduced access to in-person or telephone services. Emerging locally-based approaches, including local justice hubs, proximity offices, mobile justice services and the use of demographic, spatial and transport data to determine service locations, illustrate how delivery can be adapted more closely to where and how people need support.
Countries are also making greater efforts to understand how people experience justice services, but feedback is not yet consistently converted into organisational learning. Many institutions use surveys, complaints, user-journey mapping or targeted research to understand experiences of accessibility, treatment, fairness and outcomes. However, approaches differ substantially across institutions and countries, limiting comparability and the development of a cumulative evidence base on what works. More fundamentally, mechanisms using feedback data to inform service design and delivery remain uneven. The emerging picture is therefore one of increasing attention to user experience, but a less developed capacity to close the loop between evidence, institutional learning and reform.
Digital transformation is now a near-universal feature of justice reform. Most countries have adopted digital transformation strategies and invested in e-filing, digital portals, electronic communications, electronic case files and remote proceedings, with clear potential to improve accessibility and efficiency. However, the contribution of these investments to people-centred outcomes varies considerably. Implementation often remains organised around individual institutions or stages of the justice journey, leaving users to navigate a fragmented system. Only around one-third of countries demonstrate a digital-by-design approach that uses technology and data to rethink processes, information flows and service delivery around users, rather than simply transferring existing procedures online. There is therefore a risk that digitalisation reproduces existing institutional complexity.
The ability to use data strategically remains another important dividing line. Data governance in justice is developing, but many countries continue to rely on general government data policies or institution-specific frameworks rather than an integrated and people-centred justice data strategy. Fragmented ownership, inconsistent definitions and uneven data obligations across providers constrain interoperability and make it difficult to build a comparable, system-wide picture of needs, pathways, services and outcomes. At the same time, there is clear progress in the sophistication with which data are being used. More advanced systems increasingly combine administrative information with user-experience data, feedback, population surveys and other evidence, demonstrating the potential to move from institution-specific reporting towards a richer understanding of how the justice system performs for people.
Participation presents a similar pattern. Engagement with professional stakeholders and civil society is well established across much of the justice sector, particularly in relation to legislative and policy reforms. Direct and sustained participation by users and people with lived experience is considerably less embedded, especially at the level of service design and implementation. Consultation therefore remains more institutionalised than co-design. Strengthening the participation of users and communities throughout the policy cycle can provide insights that administrative information alone cannot capture and help ensure that reforms respond to the practical circumstances in which people encounter the justice system.
Finally, countries have invested substantially in legal information, outreach, plain-language communication and self-help tools, but these initiatives often remain fragmented. Online legal information is almost universal and plain-language requirements are increasingly common, yet justice-wide approaches to simplifying procedures, forms and institutional pathways remain less developed. Similarly, information is not always connected to personalised assistance, effective triage or referral. The result is an important distinction between making information available and enabling people to act on it. More coherent approaches to strengthening legal capability – combining accessible information, simplification, multiple service channels and “no wrong door” referral arrangements – remain an important frontier in the transition towards justice as a responsive public service.
The same challenge is visible in planning and budgeting. Most countries have mechanisms for justice-sector planning and many apply programme or performance budgeting, but these processes remain predominantly organised around institutional mandates. Evidence on legal needs and user outcomes is rarely embedded systematically in resource-allocation decisions, and the connection between public expenditure, the services financed and the outcomes achieved often remains difficult to trace. The report therefore points towards a broader understanding of performance: one that connects resources to the services they enable and assesses the justice system not by efficiency alone, but by the outcomes it produces for people and communities.
Taken together, the findings suggest a need to strengthen the strategic stewardship of justice systems. This does not imply centralising decision making or weakening the independence of justice institutions. Rather, it means developing the collective capacity to understand needs across the system, establish shared outcomes, ensure that different services and institutions connect effectively, use evidence to guide resources and reforms, and learn continuously from results. Such stewardship requires clear responsibilities and co-ordination across ministries, judiciaries, legal aid, alternative dispute resolution, administrative justice and community-based providers, as well as connections with social, health, housing, employment and other services where justice problems intersect with wider needs.
Building on the OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems and the findings of this report, countries can prioritise the following areas:
1. Establish a people-centred purpose for the justice system and translate it into measurable outcomes and shared goals.
Articulate high-level commitments to access to justice through shared goals that describe what the justice system is expected to achieve for people and businesses, including effective problem resolution, fairness, accessibility, trust and prevention of wider hardship. Clarify the contribution of relevant institutions to these outcomes while respecting their distinct mandates and constitutional independence. Support shared objectives through co-ordination arrangements, monitoring frameworks and public accountability.
2. Build a sustained evidence base on legal needs, justice pathways and outcomes and use it to drive reform.
Complement administrative and institutional data with regular population-level evidence on the justice problems experienced by people and businesses, the actions they take, their experiences along their justice pathway and the outcomes they achieve. Disaggregate evidence, where appropriate, to identify disparities affecting different population groups and assess legal capability. Establish mechanisms that connect these findings directly to prevention, service redesign, investment decisions and evaluation.
3. Develop coherent, end-to-end justice pathways based on the nature of people’s problems.
Move from a collection of individual services towards a continuum of information, assistance, advice and dispute resolution proportionate to different needs and capabilities. Strengthen intake, triage, referral and follow-up so that people are not required to understand institutional boundaries to obtain support. Apply a “no wrong door” approach, where appropriate, to connect courts, administrative bodies, legal aid, ADR providers, ombuds institutions, local authorities, social services and community organisations. Give particular attention to access to relevant assistance and advice, which emerges as a major pressure point across countries.
4. Design services around people’s capabilities and focus on effective resolution.
Adapt service design to differences in legal capability, problem type, vulnerability and location rather than assuming a standard user. Ensure that services are geographically, financially, digitally, practically and psychologically accessible and use demographic, spatial and other relevant evidence to identify gaps. Develop digital, telephone, face-to-face and community channels as complementary components of an integrated, multichannel service offer. Embed plain language, accessible forms, clear information on costs and timelines, and navigation support into service standards.
5. Shift from digitising procedures to transforming justice services.
Use digital transformation to simplify and redesign processes around users rather than reproducing existing procedures online. Develop digital-by-design approaches that reduce duplication, improve information flows and connect information, intake, triage, assistance and resolution more effectively. Test and evaluate innovations and scale those that demonstrably improve access, quality and outcomes.
6. Strengthen justice data governance and interoperability.
Develop coherent governance arrangements for justice data, including clear institutional responsibilities, common definitions and people-centred variables, data quality standards, privacy and security safeguards, personal data protection frameworks, cybersecurity measures and appropriate data-sharing arrangements. Improve interoperability where it can connect evidence on needs, services and outcomes across institutional boundaries. Focus data strategies not on data collection alone, but on making data usable for policy, service delivery, accountability and continuous improvement.
7. Put participation, feedback and legal empowerment at the centre of continuous improvement.
Create recurring opportunities for users, communities and relevant groups to contribute to policy and service design alongside established engagement with professional and institutional stakeholders. Systematically collect feedback on accessibility, treatment, procedural fairness and outcomes, and link it to clear mechanisms for service improvement. Use evidence on people’s needs and capabilities to target legal literacy and empowerment initiatives more effectively.
8. Connect planning and financing more clearly to needs, services and outcomes.
Expand justice-sector planning beyond individual institutional portfolios to consider the full range of services contributing to the prevention and resolution of justice problems. Combine population-level evidence on legal needs with caseload and institutional performance data when setting priorities. Make the relationship between resources, services and outcomes more visible in budgeting and performance frameworks, including accessibility, timeliness, fairness, quality and effective resolution. This can support stronger prioritisation under fiscal constraints and help identify opportunities for earlier and less resource-intensive interventions.
9. Strengthen prevention and address the wider consequences of justice problems.
Use evidence on recurring justice problems to inform improvements in laws, administrative processes, information provision and safeguards that can reduce avoidable disputes. Expand early information, assistance and referral to prevent problems from escalating. Strengthen links with health, housing, employment, financial and social services where justice problems generate wider hardship. Incorporate prevention more explicitly into justice strategies, planning and evaluation alongside resolution and institutional performance.
The overall direction is not towards a single institutional model. Countries have different constitutional arrangements, legal traditions and distributions of responsibility, and the report identifies effective practices emerging through different approaches. The common challenge is to ensure that these arrangements collectively deliver for people. The next stage of people-centred justice reform therefore lies increasingly in implementation and system coherence: connecting evidence to decisions, services to one another, resources to outcomes and people’s experiences to continuous improvement.
Advancing people-centred justice is, in this sense, fundamentally a governance challenge. It calls for moving beyond a predominantly institution-by-institution approach towards strategic stewardship of a justice system that remains institutionally diverse while being collectively oriented towards fair and effective outcomes. Such an approach can strengthen the ability of justice institutions to fulfil their respective mandates, improve the use of public resources and make the rule of law tangible in people’s everyday lives.
References
[4] Byrom, N., M. Piccinin-Barbieri and P. Wells (2024), “Towards effective governance of justice data”, OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, No. 74, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/d2950e02-en.
[5] de Langen, M., T. Teplova and G. Mulherin (2026), “Towards a measurement framework for people-centred justice systems”, OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, No. 92, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f4c9dccb-en.
[2] OECD (2025), Making Justice Systems More Effective and People Centred: Advancing a Responsive Rule of Law, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/e02fd90b-en.
[6] OECD (2023), “Recommendation of the Council on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems”, OECD Legal Instruments, OECD/LEGAL/0498, OECD, Paris, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0498.
[1] OECD/Open Society Foundations (2019), Legal Needs Surveys and Access to Justice, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/g2g9a36c-en.
[3] Task Force on Justice (2019), Justice for All: Report of the Task Force on Justice, https://s42831.p1622.sites.pressdns.com/pathfinders/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/03/Task-Force-on-Justice-Report-27Jun19.pdf.