New Funding Announced for Innovative Research Relating to Public Legal Education and Information

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - March 3, 2015) - How can public legal education and information help Canadians get justice in our legal system? With the demand for publicly-funded or low-cost legal services far exceeding the supply, public legal education and information (PLEI) is filling an increasingly larger role in meeting the legal needs of people with modest means. Yet we know relatively little about how PLEI can help people deal with their civil legal problems.

CLEO is pleased to announce that the Law Foundation of Ontario has funded its Evolving Legal Services Research Project, a three-year initiative that examines the effectiveness of PLEI in helping low- and modest-income people address their legal problems.

The research project will be led by CLEO, working in partnership with the Institute for Social Research at York University. The research, conducted at sites in Ontario and British Columbia, will look at PLEI provided at various points along the legal services continuum, with the goal of identifying when PLEI is effective on a primarily stand-alone or self-help basis and when a fuller continuum of legal services, including PLEI, is required.

This innovative research project builds on preliminary work conducted by CLEO that culminated in a detailed research plan. For an overview of the plan, see the Executive Summary. For more detailed information, please see the Evolving Legal Service Research Design Report.

The research plan was developed based on a literature review and report prepared by Dr. Melina Buckley for CLEO, Evolving Legal Services: Review of Current Literature.