What you can do

At the office:

• Communicate priorities for your Branch to the CBA’s Equal Justice Initiative staff.
• Know the Reaching Equal Justice report,  and keep it in the limelight for CBA members and partners outside of CBA.  Develop a speakers’ list to summarize the report, and hold a special Council meeting on the topic.
• Encourage lawyers to integrate a public legal education and information (PLEI) approach to delivering legal services
• Encourage lawyers to think about who needs what kind of help to access justice, for example, written materials for a person with literacy challenges.
• List community resources on your website, publicize the list and keep it up-to-date.
• Use the Legal Health Checklist  on Law Day and throughout the year. Adapt it to local needs, and encourage people to identify and prevent legal problems.
• Create rosters of law students and retired lawyers willing to deliver legal capabilities training.
• Create opportunities to hear from the public.
• Keep us informed with your progress.

In the community:

• Address the ‘body without a brain’ situation. Bring key groups together, plan how to get there from here, and determine who will do what.
• Connect with access to justice activities in your region. If there are none, make them happen.
• Encourage law schools and law societies to consider access to justice and experiential learning as core competency requirements.
• Get law students involved in access to justice initiatives.
• Champion a re-centred role for courts and judges, based on a people-centred vision.
• Promote professional development, information exchanges and other opportunities to build capacity for people-centred law services.
• Work with community partners to raise awareness of legal aid and champion its regeneration.
• Encourage courts and justice agencies to collect data, track progress and include value metrics.
• Encourage all members of your justice community to prioritize equal justice. Advocate to draw public attention to the issues.