Opening up justice

I imagine the Law Society of Scotland expected the appointment of Govan Law Centre's Mike Dailly as convener of its Access to Justice Committee to spice the subject up a bit in the public eye. If so, it will not have been disappointed by the committee's debut meeting.

The five lawyers and five non-lawyers, all with a track record of work and/or campaigning on issues of rights and remedies, agreed at their first meeting this week to push for "a radical Access to Justice (Scotland) Bill" as a priority for MSPs in the first parliamentary session after next year's Holyrood elections, and to commit themselves meantime to producing the detailed framework for such a bill.

There is of course plenty that needs be done. Lord Gill concluded as much a year ago in his review of the civil courts, and to the extent that the courts and Government have accepted the need for action and have begun work on his recommendations, the committee is pushing at a door that is starting to open. But there is still resistance to the Gill proposals in some sections of the profession, especially to the transfer of up to two thirds of Court of Session business to the sheriff court, and some further work to be done to avert the risk that the new district judges recommended by Gill will be overburdened with different types of work: one focus of the follow-up review now taking place under Lord Coulsfield (see Journal article).

But the committee is taking a wider look still, and proposing to include criminal as well as civil matters within its framework. One way, of course, to almost force the politicians to sit up and take notice. And on the civil side I would not be at all surprised if we see Mike Dailly's committee also making a closer examination of the district judge level of business, especially housing and family cases – in other words the types of cases, apart from debt actions, most likely to involve the people who probably have the greatest difficulty accessing justice at present.

I doubt the committee will need to be told that access to justice begins with being able to access good legal advice. Gill recognised as much, commenting that while it was beyond the scope of the review to examine the whole landscape of advice provision, it was their impression that there was a lack of co-ordination among the various sources of advice, and probably gaps in some areas. There is one challenge to run alongside devising accessible but sufficiently skilled forums for hearing disputes.

Above all the committee will have to demonstrate, if it can, that improvements can be self funding and not require significant spending up front. But I have some confidence that its members have the ability to come up with some imaginative but practical solutions.

The committee is to be commended for attempting to set the agenda ahead of the elections. This is no easy task when the subject is law reform, but a head of steam has been slowly building and it is possible that the economic and social circumstances in which we now find ourselves could work in its favour. If it can devise a framework that the main parties or most of them can be persuaded to buy into between now and next May, it will have taken a major step towards its goal. We should wish it every success.