The Internet and legal advice

Roger Smith, Director of Justice, has written a paper to kick off a project looking at whether, and to what extent, the internet and telephone ‘hotlines’ might replace face to face legal services. He says that the instinct of most practitioners is to say ‘never’: that of ministers and civil servants anxious to save money ‘not soon enough’. He goes onto to explore the issue of the use of the internet with an open mind, and asks what do you find? ‘Rather less than you could reasonably expect,’ is his provisional conclusion.

Spend a day or so trawling websites for legal advice. It puts claims for the white heat of the IT revolution in a bit of context. I took two topics legal rights in relation to housing disrepair road traffic offences. These are two classic sources of enquiry for, in the first case, the NGO advice sector and, in the second, traditional ‘High Street’ legal practitioners. Both were, to be honest, enormously disappointing in terms of moving beyond what is effectively the digital leaflet stage.

A tenant looking for advice on dealing with a leaking roof is confronted with a 4,650 word screed on the Citizens Advice Bureau website (http://www.adviceguide.org.uk) ; a better presented and much shorter section on specialist housing advice NGO Shelter’s website (http://www.England.shelter.org.uk ); a portal site that refers to both of the above and others (http://www.advicenow.org.uk ); and clear information expressly transcribed from a leaflet (Coventry Law Centre – http://www.covlaw.org.uk/housing/leaflets/leaflet5.html). These are worthy but pretty dull – particularly the CAB site which it is difficult to see attracting much custom from confused members of the public. None of it is interactive. There is very little use of the visual and none of video.

His observations of the Legal Services Counters in the Netherlands certainly provide some food for thought, and I am broadly in agreement with the arguments put forward on the issue of the digital divide, that we should “try to build provision which could be accessible to all provided that there are ways of dealing with those who need to face to face services.”
The internet and the provision of legal advice