Legal services should be accessible, empowering and based on respect

What makes a service accessible for everyone, even in circumstances where we might be vulnerable?

The Solicitors Regulation Authority in England and Wales recently published research on consumer vulnerability in the legal services market. It looked at the feasibility of developing a tool to measure and monitor vulnerabilities faced by consumers when they have a legal need, to help support and improve access to justice.

What the research found was far more challenging, which is that trying to measure risk factors for vulnerability is difficult, but also reductive. It leads us to focus on the person as the problem rather than the service. It puts the onus on our customers to identify themselves or their circumstances as vulnerable and ask us for special treatment. That’s not just stigmatising for individuals but it’s likely to miss lots of people who may indeed be in vulnerable circumstances, but don’t fit into or see themselves as part of a defined category.  

The research instead proposes a ‘universal practice’ approach which focuses on designing services that are accessible and inclusive for everyone, rather than identifying some individuals as vulnerable and making adjustments accordingly.

It’s hard to argue with that. It’s much harder, however, to think about how to put it into practice. And of course, services still have a duty to provide reasonable adjustments where that’s requested. But the hope is that by providing a more accessible service to everyone, the need to ask for specific adjustments, and the challenge of providing them, might reduce.

I recently led a discussion within the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission about how we embed accessibility and inclusion to make sure that anyone who needs to can access our service. That means thinking about everything from the words we use, to the ways people can contact us, to the technology on our website.

It means being open to doing things differently when that might help someone to use our service. But it also means asking ourselves whether doing that thing differently all the time might help other people who didn’t feel able to ask, but either struggled through, or worse, walked away.  

Fundamentally, we think it involves listening to people, through all of our day-to-day interactions and hearing what would make a difference to their experience. It means asking for and welcoming feedback – and acting on it. Small improvements can make a big difference to people's experience of using a service, and they’re often the things people remember once their interaction with a service is over.  

Legal services are often there for people at some of the lowest and most difficult times in their lives. Times where we might all be vulnerable, even if we might not think of or describe ourselves like that. In those circumstances, we all need to feel empowered to make choices and decisions about the services we’re receiving and for those decisions to be heard and respected.

The complexity of legal systems and processes and the imbalance of information and power often feel like they stack the system against consumers. But lawyers and law firms play a crucial role in helping people take control and navigate difficult circumstances in their lives. That’s why it’s so vital that our sector provides services that are accessible, empowering and based on trust and respect.