Your landlord refuses to address your mold problem. You were wrongfully terminated from your job. You doctor neglected to follow standard procedure. All of a sudden, you find yourself faced with a legal problem. Who do you call? Where do you start looking for help? Seeking answers to your questions seems like an impossible task, and as frustration sets in, you soon feel like giving up. This cycle of conflicting, confusing, and inaccessible legal information and advice is called the “advice maze”.
What we know from access to justice research is that legal problems gather and cluster with other problems such as mental health, relationship, or unemployment issues, forming a complex web of difficulties. Many individuals and families do not experience one isolated legal issue, but clusters of inter-related issues, which can sometimes stem from a single “trigger” problem. People with one or more of these complex problems are unable or unsure of where to turn for help. This is due to a lack of access to reliable legal advice, social exclusion, inability to enforce rights, and a lack of
awareness of rights and responsibilities.
One significant side effect of the advice maze is referral fatigue. The more advisors and services a person visits, the less likely he or she will obtain helpful advice. A report outlining the advice maze by the Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC) (2004), states that while 83% of users did not have success with the first advisor they had been referred to, the rate of success declined for each subsequent advisor. Understandably, this phenomenon of the advice maze and referral fatigue causes many people facing legal problems to become overwhelmed and give up – leaving many legal problems unresolved. The LSRC report found that about 1/6th of those who looked for legal advice did not obtain it successfully.
What can we take away from the “advice maze” phenomenon? Clearly, it is very important to equip people with the right information and tools as early as possible, so they can navigate sources of advice effectively. Legal information should be clear and easy to understand, as well as readily available. In terms of giving advice, service providers should provide clear direction to an appropriate alternative source of advice to discourage people from giving up trying to solve their legal problems. Additionally, there is a need to raise awareness of individual rights and the processes that can be used to affect them. These findings are of particular relevance to community legal services, and are key for making access to justice for all a reality rather than an aspiration.
This article is based on the Canadian Forum for Civil Justice’s new infographic “The Advice Maze”. CFCJ’s infographic series takes academic articles and summarizes their most important points in graphic form. Find it online via the CFCJ website at http://www.cfcj-fcjc.org/infographics/advicemaze.