Unsung Hero: Does Access to Justice = Greater Access to Technology?

  • February 27, 2017

The Unsung Hero column is intended to introduce a member of our profession who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership, innovation, commitment, or made significant contributions to social justice and community affairs.

A smartphone app called Legalswipe allows anyone with a smartphone to know their rights when being stopped by a police officer, the app gives the user specific language to be able to respond to police officer’s inquiries. JusticeTrans, is another a mobile app that provides legal information on transgender rights. Law Scout Inc., an online service connecting small businesses with pre-vetted lawyers. Small Claims Wizard, is another online service that provides step-by-step guidance through Ontario’s small-claims process.  

These examples show us that technology allows for greater delivery of legal information and services thereby decreasing the financial burden associated with conventional legal interactions and thus improving access to Justice. Some of our current solutions to addressing access to justice have traditionally emphasized refining court processes and increasing access to legal education and representation. But, technology could be used to develop new ideas of tackling the issue, such as:

  • allowing for efficiencies;
  • facilitating collaboration;
  • engaging a potentially wider constituency; 
  • providing unique and creative solutions to systemic issues; 

The influence of technology may have some potential negative impacts and we need to be mindful and the understand the new issues that will arise in the legal landscape and access to justice with the increased use of technology.

The anecdotal stories below by three very talented, community minded and engaged students at the University Calgary exemplifies some of these pro and cons to the use of technology as it related to access to justice. 

gwhiteside_200x200.pngGreg Whiteside is a second year law student at the University of Calgary and has set-up western Canada’s first Health/Justice Partnership between Student Legal Assistance (SLA) located in Calgary, Alberta and the Calgary Urban Project Society (CUPS), a downtown community health centre specializing in medical, housing and education. Through this model, law students offer legal resources to the multi-disciplinary team at CUPS made up of medical and community professionals all working to assist low-income Calgarians in the downtown core.

The project is currently establishing what kind of legal information is helpful to medical and community professionals and how this information can be shared by the centre’s technological systems. This information will be loaded into the centre’s online databases and allows professionals to easily access information that will help them understand a patient’s legal situation and how this may affect any medical, housing or family programming that may be developed on behalf of their patient. 

This partnership exemplifies how to plug the legal profession into the information exchange going on around them thereby leading to better advice that can be provided for both patients and clients. 

mpoitier_200x200-(1).pngMeagan Potier is also a second year law student at the University of Calgary who works with the University of Calgary’s chapter of Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC) as a Program Coordinator, and with SLA as a caseworker/group leader. Her experience sheds light on how the two groups use technology. PBSC is an organization works both to represent the needs of clients through court based processes on a short term basis (for example, as duty counsel) and contributes to legal education through a wide-ranging number of research based projects. SLA works primarily to represent clients through the entire life of their legal issues. Both PBSC and SLA have been around since before widespread access to internet-equipped cellphones and the prevalence of websites touting supposedly sound legal advice. 

SLA is an organization that handles a lot of physical paper. Client files consist of hand-written time tables and notes, even if typed, printed and added to a file kept in a cabinet in a locked office. If a closed file needs to be accessed and it must be physically located. However, clients can find SLA online on their website. 

PBSC, unlike SLA, deals with external organizations and those organizations are PBSC’s clients. Coordination with these clients is easily done through email and telephone, and PBSC coordinates with regional and national offices with relative ease using technology to allow for sustainable information sharing and collaboration. Processes are all online or through email, and as PBSC coordinates among members themselves using social media and cloud services. 

PBSC is a great example of how appropriate use of technology can provide sustainable collaboration within groups, given that PBSC works with mainly institutional clients.  

mfergel_200x200.pngMatt Fergel is a first year law student at the University of Calgary and works on the PBSC Pro Bono Yes Means Yes Project. He believes that, “while technology can be a huge aid in improving access to justice, new problems can arise which require the legal community to educate people on how to use it properly”.  Matt gives presentations to teenagers in high schools regarding sexual consent and how the law deals with it.  He present real cases that have proceeded through Canadian courts to show young people real-life situations and their consequences.  Some of these situations involve technology in sexual contexts, such as sexting. For example, he teaches the legal rights and responsibilities when one person receives an intimate image from another, and the potential consequences if the receiving party shares or threatens to share it with others.  A criminal charge of distribution of child pornography is just one of those potential consequences, not to mention the emotional, social and psychological effects on a victim. 

The need to educate young people on this topic is a prime example of how increased use of technology, which can have empowering effects on access to justice, can also create the need for new legal education.  

Do you know an Unsung Hero? Tell us about them. If you know a lawyer who deserves to be recognized, please send us an email to communications@cba-alberta.org with the lawyer's name and the reasons why you believe they are an 'unsung hero'. The only formal requirements for nomination are that our 'unsung hero' be an Alberta lawyer and a CBA member. 


Noren Hirani is an Associate in the Intellectual Property Group at Gowling WLG (Canada) LLP in Calgary and Chair of the CBA Alberta Branch Quality Committee. Noren grew up in Ottawa, and studied law in French at the University of Ottawa.