Social Work and The Delivery of Legal Services
| Published date | 01 January 1979 |
| Date | 01 January 1979 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1979.tb01508.x |
| Author | Andrew Phillips |
SOCIAL
WORK
AND
THE
DELIVERY
OF
LEGAL
SERVICES
THERE
is
a
growing recognition,
as
shown
by
‘the establishment
of the Royal Commission
on
Legal Services, that some legal needs
are, under our present system of legal aid and advice, going unmet.
It
seems logical, though, that any attempt to improve the system
should follow some assessment of how much need there is and how
best it can be met.
The little existing empirical research in this field is inadequate,
however, largely because
of
this emphasis
on
“how much.”
Lawyers tend to regard the existence of unmet legal need as un-
problematical, to assume that policy can be made
on
the basis of
an accurate quantification of unmet need. On the contrary, the
complexity of the concept of legal need is the central problem in
any
discussion
of
the delivery
of
legal services. “Need,” “legal”
and
‘‘
unmet
”
are all problematic words whose definitions are not
universally agreed in this context. It is therefore impossible to
identify unmet legal needs and count them.’
A
medical analogy will
serve to illustrate the fact that
“
need
”
is an elastic concept. It was
found by Feldstein that if the number of hospital beds is increased,
the average length of stay in hospital increases to nullify the hopes
of those who wished to reduce waiting lists.* Hence the definition of
“
medical
need
”
is
altered; people spend longer in hospital with the
same ailment. It seems reasonable to assume that people’s legal needs
will similarly expand
to
occupy the services provided either by the
same needs being treated in greater depth (as with hospitals) or by
‘‘
needs
”
being re-defined and new needs thus created. The notion
of
what is
“
legal
”
is similarly problematic. Problems are differently
classified by the different people who deal with them: the sufferer of
the problem, the lawyer, the Citizens’ Advice Bureau worker, the
welfare agencies.
No
phenomenon is absolutely
‘‘
legal
”;
even
“hard law” subjects such
as
Land Law exist only because a
mechanism is needed to achieve certain social ends; they cannot be
divorced from the social world in which they operate. Abel-Smith,
1
The major British study
is
Abel-Smith, Zander and Brooke,
Legal
Problems
ond
the Citizen
(1973);
see
also Carson,
Legul
Aid, Leguf Services, Southumpton
(Report
for
Hampshire Legal Action Group, 1975); Kelly and Lorber,
“
The Medway: Unmet
Need for Legal Services,”
Praxis
4 (The Law Clinic, University
of
Kcnt at Canter-
bury).
American material includes Gresham Sykca,
“
Legal Necds
of
the Poor in
the City
of
Dcnver
”
(1969-70) 4 Law and Socicty Rcv. 255;
Stolz,
The Legal
Needs
o/
the Publfc: A Survey Analysis
(Research Contributions
of
the American
Bar Foundation, no.
4,
1968); and Curran and Spalding, “The Legal Needs
of
the
Public, Preliminary Report of a National Survey by the Special Committee to Survcy
Legal Neds
of
the American Bar Association in Collaboration with the American
Bar Foundation
”
(1974).
a
Such studies do, however, servc the useful political purpose of providing
seemingly rcliable cvidencc in support
of
the extension of legal scrvices.
3
Feldstein,
Economic
Analysis
for
Health
Service Eficiency
(1
967).
29
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