Profile of British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal

Legal Evolution, a publication founded in 2017 by Bill Henderson, Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, recently published an article entitled Is access to justice a design problem?

It profiles British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada’s first online dispute resolution:

"Several years ago, if someone asked me how to solve the U.S. access to justice problem, I would have replied, 'more government funding, more generous philanthropy, and more pro bono hours from lawyers.' With these greater inputs, a lawyer would be available to every citizen needing to access the legal system. Almost as a reflex, I suspect a large number of my lawyer peers would have given the same answer."

"But what’s the likelihood of a 5x or 6x increase in resources? Cf. Legal Services Corporation, '2017 Justice Gap' at 6 (June 2017) (reporting that 86% of the civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans in the past year received inadequate or no legal help.). I’d put it at close to zero."

"Today, I am much more hopeful about our ability to substantially solve access to justice. But it’s likely going to involve a massive redesign of how many types of disputes get resolved, including the possibility of lawyers and courtrooms being engineered out the process. I say this based upon what I have learned about the Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT), Canada’s first online dispute resolution (ODR) system."

The article features comments made by Shannon Salter, the Chair of the CRT.

Salter was a keynote speaker at the recent annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) in Edmonton. Her May 29, 2019 presentation to CALL is available online.