News on U.S. government agencies, U.S. politics, companies doing business with U.S. federal government. Read U.S. national and local news. This site is not affiliated with United States Government.
(USGovernment-News.Com, December 16, 2012 ) San Francisco, CA -- While the B.C. Legal system may have its share of troubles, it is not all bad news, as the Legal Services Society is blazing the trail when it comes to a low-cost approach to handling family disputes.
The society is pioneering by producing quality empirical evidence, unlike all other stakeholders.
The attorney general had asked the society what it needed to improve, and the society noted more money, as well as offering up a 780 legal-aid family law clients to support the request.
"The results, which are consistent with a study of 800 clients we conducted in 2006, show that most family law problems can be resolved to the client's satisfaction with a lawyer's advice but without going to court," explained Mark Benton, executive director of the society.
The cutback to the department that involved legal funding occurred after the Liberals assumed power and forced the society to refocus the approach of solving problems instead of assuming every case should find its way to court.
Family duty counsel was added in 2003, and expanded to family law.
The programs are used to provide larger bang-for-the-buck service
"Our research demonstrates that this approach works. Data from the evaluation showed that 75 per cent of clients who used duty counsel services resolved their legal issues, while the resolution rates for telephone advice clients and out-of-court advice lawyer clients were 71 per cent and 70 per cent respectively. Client satisfaction with the outcome was 76 per cent for both advice lawyers and duty counsel, and 84 per cent for the telephone advice lawyers."
The resolution rates lowered for the those 4,000 disputes that ran through the courts with society providing representation. However, that statistic could be due to how complex the situations can be when it comes to cases that end up in court.
The pointed survey noted that the value of less-expensive non-attorney assistance was beneficial to navigating the system.
"From these results, it is easy to conclude that more 'front-end' and triage services are needed to increase early resolution rates so that fewer people end up on the costly road to court," Benton said.
"But family law is not that simple. This is because 35 per cent of respondents also reported having socio-economic issues that had an impact on the main family law issue. For example, a child custody problem may have, as its root cause, housing issues.
About Personal Legal Services: Personal Legal Services (http://www.personallegalservices.com) provides clients with exactly what the name entails. Learn about what type of service in representation anyone can get from the website, and acquire the representation one would desire.
We are pleased to offer you this exciting, new, and entirely free professional resource. Visit our Free Industry resource center today to browse our selection of 600+ complimentary Industry magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more. Get popular titles including:
