Making Justice Systems More Effective and People Centred

3. Empowering people and preventing justice problems

Abstract

Empowering people, SMEs and communities—and preventing justice problems—are foundational to a responsive rule of law. This chapter looks at legal empowerment and legal capability, and sets out an evidence base—legal needs surveys and capability measures—to design and deliver people-centred services. It outlines the legal empowerment path—from awareness and practical legal literacy to accessible services and fair outcomes—and details prevention tools: legal health (identity and basic documents), education for justice as a life-skill, systemic safeguards, early intervention and de-escalation, and anticipating demand during shocks. The chapter addresses unequal experiences of law, including for specific groups and SMEs, showing how evidence should guide assistance and coordination. Finally, the chapter emphasises participation, and co-design of services, to co-create trust and improve performance within justice institutions. 

Introduction

Empowering individuals and communities is key for promoting a responsive rule of law and enhancing competitiveness. Legal empowerment is central to effective justice, as it consciously adopts the perspectives of individuals, SMEs, and communities, as beneficiaries of justice services as well as active participants in the justice system.

People-centred justice requires that individuals have the education, support, and capabilities they need to make informed decisions about the options they have and the actions they take to resolve their justice problems, participate in justice processes, and contribute to the planning and reform of justice systems. At the same time, governments and justice institutions must be equipped with empirical knowledge across three key dimensions: legal needs and justice problems, legal capabilities, and justice outcomes. This evidence base is essential for designing, implementing, and evaluating justice initiatives that reflect the real experiences and expectations of people, businesses, and communities.

Legal empowerment promotes a responsive rule of law both directly and indirectly. Empowered individuals and communities are better able to uphold the guarantees of equality before and under the law, access the protections and benefits it affords, and resolve problems and disputes peacefully and effectively. They help to ensure that those who exercise power remain accountable to the law. Similarly, legally empowered SMEs are better positioned to operate in accordance with legal standards, to rapidly resolve problems they encounter, to benefit from regulatory protections, and to contribute to economic growth and competitiveness. Promoting the rule of law through legal empowerment requires institutional reform, access to justice strategies, and programmes that enhance the capabilities of individuals, communities, and SMEs.

This chapter explores the concepts of legal empowerment and prevention of injustices, as well as their relationship to the rule of law. It builds on the 2023 Recommendation, which recognises the multi-faceted nature of legal empowerment (OECD, 2021[1]). It analyses established and emerging practices and strategies from OECD member and partner countries in relation to each dimension of the legal empowerment path. It incorporates case studies and available data and evidence to support cross-jurisdictional learning and the fostering of good practices. This analysis of effective strategies provides a foundation for the development of indicators to measure legal empowerment.

Legal empowerment and the rule of law

Trust in public institutions will be enhanced by a more responsive rule of law combined with effective people-centred justice. Law is an important instrument for governance and organisation within societies. It regulates rights and responsibilities within the three interacting spheres - regulation of public, commercial and private relationships.

The growing complexity of societies and economies contributes to greater complexity of the law and its heightened impact on people’s lives and on commercial activities. The reach of the rule of law has extended and its impact expanded to more areas that affect the day to day lives of people, businesses, and communities. This reach is particularly evident in advanced welfare states offering a range of public services, which increases interactions with public officials. Each of these interactions resulting from the operation of law is an opportunity to build trust and a responsive rule of law.

Genn pointed out more than two decades ago: “It is not the law that is remote from attempts to resolve justiciable problems, but rather it is formal legal proceedings that are largely remote from the resolution of many day-to-day justiciable problems” (Genn, 1999[2]). The lack of access may be contributing to a deepening of the remoteness of law and legal institutions. More recent empirical studies suggest a greater divergence. Sandefur concludes that “formal legal institutions are not just materially peripheral to most people’s civil justice issues, in the sense of being outside their experience. It’s the case that law is conceptually peripheral to many people’s justice issues. They don’t think of their justice issues in terms of courts, or rights” (Sandefur, 2025[3]).

The potential positive benefit of the rule of law is even further removed for people who do not belong to the dominant groups in society, as well as the SMEs operated by them (Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, 2021[4]). Members of these communities have too often experienced law and justice systems as creating and perpetuating exclusion and discrimination and entrenching poverty, insecurity, and resentment (Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, 2021[4]). In several countries, including Australia and Canada, repeated studies have demonstrated that most indigenous peoples mistrust the justice system due to the harm caused in the past by policies imposed by the law and carried out by police, social workers, and other agents of the state. Enduring inequalities and actual or perceived bias weaken confidence in justice institutions, meaning that groups most reliant on legal protection may be less inclined to seek support and less likely to achieve fair outcomes.

A responsive rule of law must include appropriate services to support the resolution of justice problems experienced by people, SMEs, and communities. When illegal acts, failures in public service or shortcomings in justice systems are not effectively addressed, this impacts confidence in the rule of law. In these circumstances, targeted measures will be required to rebuild trust in public institutions. For example, the Netherlands took proactive steps to investigate the status of the rule of law in the country by establishing a State Commission on the Rule of Law (Staatscommissie rechtsstaat) and making recommendations for improvement (State Commission on the Rule of Law, 2024[5]). The rule of law is not static and decontextualised, it is a responsive principle that can adjust to changes in society and the economy and to the needs of people and communities.

A responsive rule of law requires that people-centred justice systems and legal empowerment are at its epicentre. Empowered people facilitate effective and equal protection and benefits as well as equality before and under the law. Legal empowerment strategies are related to, and can be informed by, more general measures designed to enhance public participation. The OECD Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy report emphasised the importance of giving citizens a greater voice in many settings through the adoption of new deliberative processes and inclusive participation mechanisms to improve service design and performance (OECD, 2022[6]).

People, SMEs, and communities empowered to pursue solutions to their justice problems can have a crossover effect of civic empowerment and ability and willingness to participate actively in public decision-making processes. Positive interactions with actors and entities that provide them with justice services reduces power imbalances, particularly where participation is actively promoted by the public sector. The essence of this close connection between legal empowerment and the rule of law is captured in the Justice for All report of the Task Force on Justice. This reframes the concept of access to justice as people’s ability to prevent and resolve their justice problems, and to participate fully in their societies and economies, as opposed to simply obtaining access to the formal justice system (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]).

Understanding legal empowerment and capability

Legal empowerment is a central component of people-centred justice and is the first stage of people’s justice journey (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]). In the 1960s and 1970s, a similar understanding of the importance of legal empowerment to improve the lives of poor people led to the establishment of community legal aid clinics in several countries, including Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the US. These movements built on the experience of the UK’s Citizen’s Advice service, a volunteer-run organisation that opened 200 offices in 1939. These movements broadened the rule of law’s procedural focus to include an outcomes-based approach (Di Giovanni and De Langen, 2024[8]). The Justice for All report frames the justice journey as composed of ‘empowering people and communities’, ‘access to people-centred justice services’ and ‘obtaining fair outcomes’ (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]).

Legal empowerment is the concern of all components of the justice system including, institutions, procedures, services, legal assistance and other service-providers, and information. Empowerment involves building the justice system’s ability to respond appropriately to justice problems as they are experienced by people and communities, actively taking into account their actual situation and capabilities. Specific initiatives should be undertaken to strengthen the capabilities of all people to exercise their rights as individuals and community members. Legal empowerment extends to the use of legal services and processes, as well as related activities such as legal advocacy and law reform, to increase disadvantaged people’s control over their lives and to ensure democratic governance and the rule of law based on substantive equality. All three approaches are required to ensure justice for all.

Finally, legal empowerment extends to participation by people from outside the justice system in the design, delivery, and evaluation of justice services. Legal empowerment, when understood from this systemic perspective, is central both to achieving equal access to justice and to democratising justice.

There is a tendency to use the terms legal capability and legal empowerment interchangeably, but the two are not synonymous. Legal capability relates to the knowledge, skills, and attributes required for people to decide whether and how to use the law and legal processes to address their legal needs or resolve their justice problems. The OECD has highlighted that capability is an essential component of measuring and meeting legal needs (OECD, 2019[9]). Strategies designed to increase legal capabilities frequently focus narrowly on ensuring that an individual’s immediate justice needs are met, whereas legal empowerment extends to providing the means and support for individual and community participation in justice issues that affect their lives and opportunities in a broader sense and on a longer-term basis.

Practical legal capability is a foundational aspect of legal empowerment strategies and key to designing people-centred justice. The PULS report has extended empirical knowledge through a large-scale population survey that takes an in-depth look at both legal needs and legal understanding and capability, as well as the relationships between them (Balmer, 2024[10]). Building on economist and philosopher Amartya Sen’s capability approach to human welfare, PULS conceptualises legal capability as “the freedom and ability to navigate and utilise the legal frameworks which regulate social behaviour to achieve fair resolution of justiciable issues. There are many dimensions or domains of legal capability spanning knowledge, skills, attributes, and resources that might be required to address justiciable problems” (Balmer, 2024[10]). PULS uses two multi-faceted dimensions to measure legal capability: skill/confidence and attitude (Box 3.1).

Box 3.1. Victoria Law Foundation, Public Understanding of the Law Study (PULS)

Measuring Legal Capability

The PULS questionnaire contained a core legal need module, a module to investigate legal knowledge and legal confidence, a module to investigate attitudes to justice, and two modules to capture sociodemographic data relating to respondents and their households. The aspects of legal capability included were:

Skill/confidence measures

• perceived relevance of law in everyday life (using the Perceived Relevance of Law (LAW) scale)

• general knowledge of the content of law

• practical legal literacy (the capability to obtain, understand, and navigate information and services needed to deal with everyday justiciable issues)

• digital legal capability

• legal confidence (using the General Legal Confidence (GLC) scale).

Attitude measures

• narratives of law (law being ‘remote’; law being arbitrary and to be actively ‘resisted’; a ‘game’ that can be played; and law being a ‘practical’ means to obtain objectives)

• attitudes towards the accessibility of lawyers (using the Perceived Inaccessibility of Lawyers (PIL) scale)

• trust in personal lawyers.

Source: Victoria Law Foundation (2022), https://puls.victorialawfoundation.org.au/.

A responsive rule of law harnesses empirical data and evidence to provide justice services to people in all their diversity. The PULS report highlighted the primacy of practical legal literacy to ensuring that justice needs are met and fair outcomes are achieved, even without legal assistance. The report acknowledged that only a small percentage of the people surveyed have this bundle of capabilities (Balmer, 2024[10]). Given the cross-jurisdictional consistency of legal needs surveys, it is highly likely that comparable low levels of practical legal literacy would be found across OECD countries. Given this legal capability disparity or deficit, PULS emphasises “the importance of designing public information, referral systems, forms, processes, structured interactions, general support and expert legal services to meet the needs of people at all capability levels” (Balmer, 2024[10]). For example, the Netherlands is developing a nationwide network of socio-legal service points, including legal aid clinics, to ensure accessible legal support for people with low legal capability. This effort includes increased public funding to improve service quality and coordination with national institutions like the “Juridisch Loket”, an easily accessible legal services counter (Government of the Netherlands, 2025[11]).

The legal empowerment path

Applying knowledge about legal capabilities to provide justice services that are better matched to people’s skills/resources and attitudes is vital to legal empowerment. The rule of law, however, is more than a justice journey tied to a specific justice problem or clusters of problems. It requires providing the opportunity for a lifelong relationship to people-centred justice. The rule of law must operate on an ongoing basis and requires the active participation of people, SMEs, and communities to become and remain effective. This broader concept of the relationship between people and communities and the rule of law and justice systems can be referred to as the “legal empowerment path”. Along this path people are empowered not only to resolve their personal justice problems but to ensure that state actors guarantee equality before and under the law, and equal protection and benefits of the law.

The legal empowerment path involves several dimensions. It begins with enabling people, SMEs, and communities to prevent justice problems before they arise by building their awareness and knowledge about the law, legal rights and obligations and the justice system. It continues through justice pathways and participation in justice system design and law reform and is supported by justice providers who are themselves empowered and have the orientation and skills to provide meaningful justice services in the context of a responsive rule of law.

Prevention and empowerment

Preventing justice problems is a key legal empowerment strategy. People who face justice problems that they cannot resolve experience negative impacts on their health, their relationships, their productivity, and their financial situation (OECD, World Justice Project, 2019[12]). The Justice for All report emphasised the importance of a shift toward preventing injustice to close the justice gap, to reduce the number of people who suffer harm, and to free up resources for dealing with serious and intractable problems (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]). Prevention of justice problems leads to a triple win: individuals undergo fewer justice problems; society benefits from the improvements in health, social cohesion, and income that come about as a result of fewer conflicts; and justice actors benefit from lower case pressure (OECD, World Justice Project, 2019[12]).

Prevention and early intervention strategies can address multiple underlying social issues. These strategies include education and outreach programs to raise awareness about rights and responsibilities, community-based initiatives to address the root causes of conflict and crime, and policies aimed at reducing inequality, discrimination and social exclusion. By tackling systemic problems and addressing the social determinants of justice, governments can create more resilient and inclusive societies with fewer justice problems. The 2023 Recommendation puts a strong emphasis on prevention and its definition of access to justice includes the ability of people, businesses, and communities to prevent conflicts (OECD, 2021[1]). It emphasises the prevention and timely resolution of conflicts as part of the design and delivery of people-centred legal and justice services.

Strategies aimed at prevention include provision of basic legal documentation, promotion of legal health, education aimed at developing law as a life skill, systemic prevention of justice problems, early intervention and de-escalation, as well as anticipating demand and taking preventive action.

Legal health

People’s lifelong relationship with the rule of law begins with recognition of their legal status and capacity in basic legal documentation. Legal empowerment therefore begins with the provision of basic legal documents including those relating to a person’s birth registration and legal identity and those relating to other ways of securing basic needs such as proof of housing, land tenure, or land ownership. The lack of documentation causes justice problems and is a barrier to people seeking to solve these problems either on their own or with assistance. The consequences of withholding these documents include increased precariousness and vulnerability to abuse, as well as diminished educational, employment, economic, political and social opportunities.

Legal empowerment involves an understanding of the potential impact on people of the law and justice problems. The perceived idea that justice problems are a rare occurrence requiring resolution through the formal justice system has shifted towards the idea of justice problems as everyday experiences, the majority of which are addressed informally or not at all. Yet, the majority of participants in the PULS survey “didn’t see the law in their problem” despite the huge numbers of civil legal problems among those surveyed (Balmer, 2024[10]). A focus on “everyday justice”, rather than what a court declares justice to be, is in itself empowering because it incentivises individual knowledge about the relevance of law to people’s specific situations. In this sense, there is a direct analogy between a shift in attitude (albeit incomplete) toward developing good mental, emotional and physical health practices, and legal health practices: from treating sickness to preventing ill health and improving well-being.

The concept of legal health is a helpful way to understand the impact of law and the justice system on our lives. Legal health involves ensuring that one’s legal affairs are in order and knowing that certain common life events have a legal dimension. These include but are not limited to entering or exiting a personal relationship, and buying, selling, or renting a home. By becoming and staying informed about legal rights and responsibilities, justice problems can be avoided or minimised. Initiatives that focus on legal health advance our capacity to prevent justice problems and build resilience to future or recurring justice problems.

Many Australian legal assistance providers have developed “legal health checklists” that can be self-administered to create awareness of common justice problems and how to address them or used by service providers to ascertain whether an individual who is seeking one form of assistance, for example, in a homeless shelter, or has other types of problems that could be addressed through an appropriate referral. These checklists offer general advice on “how to stay legally healthy”. Despite these efforts, particularly in urban centres, the legal services landscape often suffers from a lack of coordination between agencies, thus presenting further impediments to vulnerable people in accessing “legal knowledge, comprehensive services, and institutions to solve their legal needs” (Maurino, 2020[13]). Buenos Aires’ ‘Hospital of Rights’ aimed to tackle this issue by offering inter-institutional legal advice that is not contingent on referrals and implements “a full-scale collaborative model of comprehensive justice services to address all kinds of justice problems in any field of law, requiring any kind of justice service” (Maurino, 2020[13]).

Other examples of initiatives that facilitate legal health include programmes and services that simplify the drafting and filing of wills to reduce the risk of inheritance disputes; online services that simplify the registration of a business to safeguard the health of SMEs; and assistance with trademark registration to boost competitiveness (Jaman, Lubis and Sigid Safarudin, 2023[14]).

Law and justice as a life skill

Practising law is a profession, but legal understanding should be treated as a life skill, with lifelong opportunities for all to develop and improve their capabilities, ideally well before a legal need or justice problem arises. Teaching law as a life skill helps to cultivate trust and confidence in the justice system. Important justice skills include the skills to deal with conflict peacefully and effectively, communication and empathy, and practical knowledge about where and how to access justice services. A layered approach to skill-building is most effective, starting with “foundational legal capability” which is “rudimentary legal knowledge […] to perceive, frame and characterise law and the justice system as relevant to one’s circumstances, and to support situation-specific capability” (Pleasance et al., 2014[15]).

Fundamental literacy and numeracy underpin the practical legal literacy required for people to navigate justice systems and resolve problems. However, on average across OECD countries, 18% of adults do not have basic proficiency in literacy, numeracy, and advanced problem-solving proficiency (OECD, 2024[16]). These skills have declined among adults over the past decade, particularly among the least-educated segments of the population (OECD, 2024[16]). The impact of literacy rates should be acknowledged and accommodated within the design and delivery of justice services. Education systems can contribute to ongoing and age-appropriate education about the key elements of the nation’s laws and justice sector and the rights and responsibilities of its people.

For decades, in many countries, community legal education has contributed to legal empowerment by providing people and communities with the opportunity to build legal knowledge and skills on topics relevant to their lives. It is important to provide these skills and knowledge through programmes and services that meet people where they are at different stages of life. Community Legal Education Ontario has developed a legal life skills curriculum that can be used in a range of adult learning environments, including the workplace (Community Legal Education Ontario, 2018[17]). Many education providers have developed illustrated, video, and interactive resources to facilitate learning that cater to many learning styles and literacy levels. Namibia’s Legal Assistance Centre has developed legal information resources on a range of legal issues in cartoon and cartoon video formats.

Legal needs surveys provide information about the social patterning of legal needs and justice problems within a country and have demonstrated that potential problems arise in conjunction with life transitions such as leaving school, beginning employment, marriage, and as people age. These insights provide the opportunity to assist people to take preventative action through proactive initiatives that reach people where they work and gather, such as workplaces, libraries, community centres, and other gathering places. Targeted initiatives focused on aspects of law or legal processes for people likely to immediately benefit from such knowledge which may be the most effective in assisting people with potential justice problems (Balmer, 2024[10]). For example, supporting migrants in understanding their legal rights and responsibilities can reduce their vulnerability to exploitation and help prevent justice problems involving contracts, employment, and other areas. Likewise, SMEs can limit their risk of problems and disputes by having an expert review their administrative documentation.

Legal needs surveys

Decreasing resolution rates (the degree to which people are able to resolve their justice problems) erode the credibility of the rule of law. If more and more people experience justice problems and are unable to obtain a fair outcome, this impacts their sense of justice and their faith in the rule of law. While evidence of people’s experiences of the rule of law remains scarce, the past few decades have seen an increase in the quality and availability of people-centred justice data (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]); (World Justice Project, Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, 2021[18]). Pioneering work by academics has led to the development of an agreed methodology for legal needs surveys (OECD/Open Society Foundations, 2019[19]). In the last five years alone, large surveys have been undertaken in several countries which have provided evidence that underlines the need for a different approach to justice and the rule of law.

Box 3.2. Understanding justice problems

The OECD Recommendation sets out that justice services need to be designed with people at the centre and based on an empirical understanding of their legal and justice needs, preferences, and capabilities (OECD, 2021[1]). An empirical understanding entails the collection and analysis of people-centred justice data, which the Recommendation defines as data collected “directly from people, businesses and communities and which relates to the justice problems they face, the impact these problems have, the justice they want and need, their decisions about resolving their justice problems, their experiences with justice services, and their ability to obtain a fair outcome” (OECD, 2021[1]).

There is agreement among scholars that people-centred justice data is best collected by legal needs surveys, and that the data gathering should not actually use the term “legal need” because people often do not know that the problem they are facing has a legal dimension (Genn, 2019[20]). Moreover, framing problems as legal needs presumes that the solution needs to be legal and provided by lawyers (Sandefur, 2019[21]). Since only a small percentage of justiciable problems are resolved by the formal justice system, a broader focus is required (Sandefur, 2019[21]). As such, there is a consensus on the need to look at the most common justice problems as a starting point for more effective, grounded, and relevant justice action.

While justice systems, institutions and laws are different from country to country, the most common justice problems people face are strikingly similar around the world (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]). A review conducted in 2019 of global survey data, legal needs surveys, and crime victimisation surveys from over 100 countries found that the majority of problems fall into six categories (Task Force on Justice, 2019[7]). The most common justice problems people face are:

• Problems with money and debt or consumer problems (30%)

• Disputes over housing or land or conflicts with neighbours (22%)

• Violence and crime in the public sphere, at work, and at home (21%)

• Difficulties related to access to public services, including identity documents (19%)

• Family disputes, for example around divorce and inheritance (9%)

• Problems at work, whether as an employee or business owner (8%)

In the past five years alone, large surveys have been carried out in Argentina, Australia, Burkina Faso, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Netherlands, Niger, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda, United Kingdom, and the United States (World Justice Project, 2024[22]). These surveys show remarkable similarities in terms of their findings:

• People who are in a vulnerable position typically have more justice problems.

• These problems are clustered, intertwined, and often deeply connected to other areas of their lives.

• They have more difficulty in resolving justice problems and the impacts they experience are more severe.

• Justice problems impact people’s income, health, and relationships.

• Problems such as divorce and how it is resolved have a direct impact on children.

  Collectively, unresolved justice problems are estimated to cost countries between 0.5 and 3% of their GDP (OECD, World Justice Project, 2019[12]).

Globally, roughly half of justice problems are never resolved, and of those that are, only 4% are resolved through a court decision (HiiL, 2020[23]). Improving resolution rates requires better collaboration between the wide array of justice actors that resolve people’s problems.

Systemic prevention of justice problems

Governments employ a range of preventative approaches. They identify areas that generate large numbers of disputes and use laws and regulations to prevent disputes. Examples include stronger legal protections for individuals to reduce the number and seriousness of debt, housing, and employment disputes. No-fault divorce and no-fault auto insurance are two specific examples of legislative schemes that have reduced justice problems in many jurisdictions. Enhanced fairness in the provision of public services reduces the number of disputes between service recipients and government agencies.

Governments can prevent justice problems through better design of laws, regulations, and policies. Public participation in these design processes contributes to the effectiveness of this approach. Monitoring of laws, policies, and programmes to measure their impact and any unintended negative impacts is another effective, proactive approach. In some cases, justice impact assessments are implemented before government measures are adopted or enacted, in order to ascertain potential costs and other impacts on the civil or criminal justice system.

An important part of people-centred justice are easily accessible complaints mechanisms that prevent escalation of problems by providing flexible interventions to address issues before they escalate. They provide useful feedback information for public institutions to continue to learn and improve their service delivery. Relevant justice institutions, notably ombuds institutes, administrative tribunals, and complaints-handling mechanism can advocate with governments to transform insights from individual cases to structural improvements that prevent further injustices. In the UK, Citizens Advice identifies trends by analysing data on the millions of people it helps. The service uses this evidence from people they help to try and fix the underlying causes of people’s problems (Citizens Advice, 2022[24]).

The common core of these initiatives is that the government takes the responsibility to prevent and cure justice problems rather than leaving people and communities to bear the brunt of justice problems and to seek solutions. These proactive initiatives contribute to people-centred justice and are empowering because they simplify and enable the positive use of law and legal processes toward individual and public good. People and communities have an important contribution to make to these types of government-led preventive efforts. In addition, groups, communities, and their representative organisations can take the initiative to address widespread or recurring justice problems through collective action, often focused on the source of injustice as well as its impacts.

Timely intervention and de-escalation

Even under the most effective preventive approaches people will encounter justice problems. It is not possible to eradicate all disputes and conflicts, nor is it healthy to set that as a societal goal since conflict suppression can be problematic and result in injustices. Preventing justice problems is not an all-or-nothing proposition - timely intervention and de-escalation of justice problems are properly seen as gradations of prevention since they minimise harm and contribute to speedy and effective resolution.

The rationale for early intervention is based on empirical findings that the longer justice problems remain unresolved the more difficult it is to achieve fair outcomes and that unmet needs for assistance can lead to cascading problems, including those arising from negative impacts on a person’s health and financial situation (Currie, 2009[25]). This same research establishes that people living in conditions of social and economic disadvantage tend to delay seeking help and therefore tend not to benefit from early intervention (Currie, 2009[25]). The goal remains to provide timely interventions once a justice problem is identified.

The provision of timely assistance can help to prevent the underlying conflicts that give rise to a justice problem from escalating. Justice problems that arise in the context of family or employment relationships can escalate quickly, in part because interactions continue often on a daily basis. Justice service providers can assist parties to de-escalate conflict enabling problem-solving while safeguarding the safety and interests of all parties. For example, bystander intervention training can empower individuals to intervene to de-escalate bullying, harassment, and gender-based violence, thereby preventing or mitigating harm. Integrating this skill training in a wide range of institutional settings, including schools and businesses, has been recommended as one means to address the global epidemic of gender-based violence (Mass Casualty Commission, 2023[26]). Evidence supports effective training in a variety of de-escalation techniques to empower service providers and individuals and to prevent justice problems (Gupta et al., 2023[27]).

Anticipate demand and take preventative action

When economic crises, natural disasters, or pandemics happen, the number of justice problems people face increases. Reactive attitudes can lead to increasing backlogs, growing pressure on justice actors, and decreasing resolution rates. Anticipating such surges in demand, on the other hand, and understanding the likely changes in caseload and in the types of problems that will occur enable justice leaders to take preventive action and adapt their ways of working (Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, 2021[4]). Data from legal needs surveys, rapid assessments, systematised feedback from intermediaries, and online questionnaires can all be used to develop expectations or predictions of what will happen to the caseload, which problems can be expected and how to take preventive action.

Canada’s Community Advocacy & Legal Centre (CALC) is an example of anticipating changes in demand and taking preventive action accordingly. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it sent out a three-minute survey via social media channels to community service providers and users asking what help they might need in terms of legal support and information during the pandemic (NYU CIC, 2020[28]). Results revealed that the need for information about income security and employment was increasing sharp, with consumer and debt issues rising in importance (NYU CIC, 2020[28]). CALC responded by setting up and promoting a COVID legal information page on its website with links to information about these growing issues. Since people were likely to be feeling worried, it increased its efforts to answer every phone call, rather than allowing calls to be diverted to voicemail (NYU CIC, 2020[28]).

Participation and empowerment

A people-centred justice system is one that recognises that priorities must be informed by people. The third dimension of legal empowerment is public participation in shaping justice. If people are truly at the centre of the justice system, there should be a role for them in designing and evaluating every aspect of its operation. This participation is essential to ensure that the justice system is responsive and that reforms are informed by lived experiences. It recognises that people and communities co-create the rule of law in collaboration with the justice sector workforce and other government actors and institutions. Engagement with justice system performance and reform is of a different nature from other dimensions of the legal empowerment path. In this case, people are participating not in pursuit of a specific interest in resolving a justice problem, but as members of civil society with a general interest in a healthy, functioning, responsive justice system. Their engagement can be informed both by their experiential knowledge of the justice system but other types of knowledge and skills relevant to an aspect of reform of the law or the justice system.

Empowering participation

The OECD Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy report emphasises that ensuring a healthy civic space is a precondition for citizen participation (OECD, 2024[29]). This report notes that despite variation in how OECD countries protect this space, a common factor is that protection is underpinned by respect for fundamental civic freedoms (e.g., freedoms of expression, association, and assembly), rule of law, and non-discrimination; protected media freedoms and digital rights; an enabling environment for civil society; and opportunities to actively participate in decision-making that affects people’s lives (OECD, 2024[29]). This is equally true with respect to the participation of people and communities in the justice system.

A public consultation conducted in the United Kingdom in 2023 reaffirmed that ‘open justice’ is fundamental to upholding the rule of law. Respondents consistently emphasised the critical role of transparency and accountability in the justice system, as well as the importance of fostering public understanding and awareness. Participants also identified practical barriers to open justice, including limited access to court judgments and justice data (United Kingdom's Ministry of Justice, 2025[30]). Enhancing public participation in justice not only strengthens the principles of open justice but also advances the broader objective of an open state, as called for in the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Open Government (OECD, 2017[31]). It is important that all voices and perspectives can participate in shaping the justice system, which may require addressing biases and ensuring equality within the system. People living in precarious and marginalised circumstances including recent immigrants and refugees, people living in poverty, and people with disabilities face barriers to participation in justice reform despite living lives that are heavily shaped by law. Tailored strategies are required to acknowledge, redress, and address these barriers to participation. At the same time, members of some non-dominant groups have made equality gains through the justice system and, as a result, may be more invested in ensuring its health and improving its responsiveness.

There is a need for the justice system to develop and enhance its institutional capacity for and cultural openness to participatory processes. Where feasible, these processes should be deliberative rather than consultative. Ongoing participation is key, since occasional contacts at intervals selected by justice institutions are inadequately participatory. Active steps may be required to empower people and communities to participate, including through information-sharing and collaborative practices, timelines that are conducive to collaboration, the provision of resources, and training. It is generally easier to facilitate dialogue on a local basis, but these dialogues can be connected through collaborative networks. The Colombia example of networking and collaboration of the Local Justice Systems, discussed later in the chapter, is one example.

Key areas of participation

Public participation in shaping people-centred justice has three points of contact: the design of systems and services, monitoring performance of justice institutions and the system more holistically, and law reform.

The promise of people-centred justice will not be achieved unless people are empowered to substantively participate in the design of systems and services (Hagan, 2019[32]). For example, Hagan notes that many tools to promote access fail because they are developed by legal aid providers, court administration groups, and lawyers based on their “own views about what will best engage the community” (Hagan, 2019[32]) She contrasts this with participatory design, which involves “actively consulting and collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders in a system to understand their perspectives and incorporate their priorities into system innovation” (Hagan, 2019[32]) People who use or are meant to use justice services help to identify “where it needs to be reformed, define what “better” operation would look like, and design new interventions to reform it” (Hagan, 2019[32]).

The Stanford Design Lab and HiiL, among other organisations, employ a range of techniques to promote collaborative design. The Netherland Rule of Law Commission employed co-design principles to seek input into how to improve the rule of law. Even relatively simple participatory processes can yield important and actionable results. The Stanford Design Lab worked with California’s Santa Clara County court system to invite people waiting at the courthouse for services to participate in idea-ranking sessions concerning innovations in the provision of legal information. Participants were asked to evaluate ten innovation concepts based on potential benefits to them individually and to their community. Through this process, the court heard the overarching message that participants wanted a “face-to-face feeling in their services”, but do not need face-to-face experiences with staff (Hagan, 2019[32]). They expressed “a hunger for personalised guidance tailored to their situation” (Hagan, 2019[32]).

Empowering people and communities to participate in the design of services and delivery mechanisms is time- and resource-intensive but the high-quality results speak for themselves (OECD, 2022[33]). It is essential that public participants are respected and valued within these processes and that there is clarity about their role and the potential for the results of deliberation to be implemented. Flawed consultation processes and lack of progress on meaningful results can lead to resistance to participate and in some cases to distrust of the justice institutions responsible for the reform processes.

The OECD Recommendation of the Council on Human-Centred Public Administrative Services stressed the need for public administrations to “adopt human-centred design and delivery approaches to improve users’ experiences and enable users to achieve their desired outcomes and meet their needs” (OECD, 2024[34]). People and communities should be given the opportunity to test out proposed reforms. Groups of people who are users, or potential users of services, can be brought together as a focus group to test innovations and prototypes at various stages in the design and delivery process. Interactive technologies are a key example where such testing is essential. While this may seem obvious, there are numerous examples of court-based technologies developed with the assumption that people without lawyers will use them to prepare for their court proceedings, yet these technologies were not tested by the population they were designed to serve, resulting in low usage. For instance, an early prototype of a British Columbia legal aid kiosk had a difficult interface that resulted in people requiring hands-on help to use it to complete forms (Buckley, 2010[35]). Similarly, an Arizona project called “Computers that Speak of the Law” was intended to empower Navajo and Hopi communities through legal kiosks with satellite connections that would provide legal education and guidance, but these communities did not use them (Hagan, 2019[32]).

Involving people and communities in monitoring the performance of justice systems and justice actors contributes to a responsive rule of law. At a minimum, access to data on justice system outputs should be available to interested members of the community and civil society. Ongoing monitoring by those outside the system is an important check on abuses of power. People-centred justice is outcome-based, which requires greater follow up and evaluation of both experiences with services and satisfaction with outcomes (ideally on short-, medium-, and long- term time horizons). Swedish courts have developed an effective way to gauge user satisfaction and improve the court user experience through user feedback. The feedback received assisted courts to increase user satisfaction, improve the quality of their justice services, and boost overall court performance (World Bank, 2017[36]). In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Council of Magistrates launched the Open Justice and Innovation Lab. In partnership with civil society organisations, the Lab was created to foster exchange and collaboration towards designing solutions in the judicial system and increasing trust in the judiciary (Open Government Partnership, 2021[37]). Open justice initiatives can include creative participatory processes through the integration of artistic approaches (Open Government Partnership, 2021[37]). In Mexico, Alma Migrante, an organisation working to guarantee migrants’ access to justice is employing art to raise public awareness and theatre as a public participatory process in addition to data gathering and analysis about abuses of migrants (Campos and Márquez Martínez, 2022[38]). Organisers explain, “Using these and other approaches, we seek to build an informed citizenry who can exercise their right to participation and contribute to a better understanding of how authorities must interact with the migrant population” (Campos and Márquez Martínez, 2022[38]).

Law reform (or legal reform) is the process of analysing current laws and advocating for and carrying out changes to them. The aims of this process include enhancing justice and efficiencies, addressing injustices, and preventing justice problems by addressing the underlying causes. The ultimate objective is to ensure that the legal system is responsive to society’s changing needs. The process for undertaking law reform varies from country to country, with some more open to enabling public participation. Effective participatory approaches contribute to the quality of legislation and its legitimacy. Many community groups have become adept at extending their advocacy efforts to the reform of existing laws and the adoption of new ones. The OECD has emphasised that a key driver of trust in democratic institutions is engaging better with populations and ensuring all people’s voices are heard (OECD, 2024[39]). Deliberative and inclusive processes involving “everyday people” in solving complex issues is complementary to democratic representation (OECD, 2022[33]).

People and communities have a role to play in assessing the state of the rule of law. For example, the Netherlands established a State Commission on the Rule of Law (Staatscommissie rechtsstaat) tasked with the responsibility to analyse the rule of law in the country, and to make recommendations on improving it. The State Commission took steps to “determine the citizen’s perspective” through research and a range of innovative public engagement methods (State Commission on the Rule of Law, 2024[5]). Based on extensive consultations with citizens and experts, its report includes ten concrete proposals for improvement (State Commission on the Rule of Law, 2024[5]). The report highlights the need for stronger collaboration between government and citizens to deliver on the promise of the rule of law, under the banner “Together we make the rule of law!”, emphasising that the rule of law is co-created by both government and the people, requiring mutual trust and responsibility (State Commission on the Rule of Law, 2024[5]).

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