Harding: Massive unmet need
Legal regulators have been urged to develop a ‘disability-friendly’ quality mark for law firms, who in turn should hand out ‘easy read’ client information for those with learning disabilities.
To assist, legal capacity researchers from the universities of Birmingham and Leeds have produced templates, including a letter of engagement, to help lawyers make their services more accessible to people with learning disabilities.
The templates are free for lawyers to download, adapt and use for their work.
“Easy read summaries like our example template are not a direct replacement for the full articulation of terms of business,” researchers said.
“The purpose of easy read summaries of this nature is to communicate the core concepts in the terms of business, so that disabled clients can be supported to understand the role and duties of the legal service provider, and the limits of the services they can provide.
“Importantly, easy read information does not stand alone, and often disabled people will require further support to engage with and understand the information.”
The research and templates have come out of a project called COALITION (Co-Producing Accessible Legal Information), which investigated the barriers faced by people with learning disabilities seeking legal information and advice.
“People with learning disabilities experience barriers to access to justice at every stage of seeking advice about a legal problem,” said the project report.
“This includes difficulties in accessing general information about law that can help them to identify when to seek legal advice, difficulties in accessing legal service and choosing the right service provider, understanding complex terms of business and ‘client care’ letters, and in understanding legal jargon when they do receive legal advice and services.
“People with learning disabilities have high levels of unmet legal need, which can be assisted by the development of high-quality accessible legal information on a range of different legal topics.”
COALITION brought together a group of legal professionals and people with learning disabilities for six workshops to discuss the barriers and co-produce the templates, alongside a toolkit for researchers to support inclusive research practice.
Existing sources of information about how to find legal services – such as the Law Society’s Find a Solicitor service and the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s register – were “not always as accessible as they need to be to support access to justice for disabled people with cognitive impairments”.
Among the report’s recommendations were for a new quality mark. “A tool of this nature could offer guidance and reassurance to disabled people when seeking legal services. Regulators could also increase the emphasis placed on access to legal services through their existing quality marks.”
Another was for legal regulators, legal service providers and disabled people’s organisations to work together to develop an accessible web database of easy read information about law.
The report added that legal education providers should be encouraged to cover equality law, including specific details about disability reasonable adjustments.
“Disability awareness training and detailed guidance about communicating with and supporting disabled clients should be considered an essential part of the vocational stages of training to become a barrister, solicitor or legal executive.
“Individual law firms could improve access to the services they provide by: creating accessible guides to their services; making sure that high street offices are physically accessible and welcoming for clients with learning disabilities; work with local disabled person’s organisations to raise awareness of their services and demystify the work they do; having easy read versions of common written legal information available for clients.”
Many of the lawyers involved in the project worked in the mental capacity and Court of Protection field, “and so the issue of client care was not always straightforward, as the client themselves may not be instructing the solicitor”.
As a result, several did not provide any written information to the client about the services they offer, because this was not a regulatory requirement.
However, disabled participants “were clear that they would always want to have some kind of written reference material that they could look at as a reminder of what the solicitor had said, and what they could do for them.
“This was the case even if they were unable to understand the full complexities of the representation and services the legal professional would provide.”
Lawyers needed to understand that disabled people often feared not being taken seriously and that this was, in itself, a barrier to justice.
“It is, therefore, important that legal professionals also ‘take seriously’ potential clients with learning disabilities, and are able to communicate with them in a way which is accessible and inclusive.”
COALITION is a collaboration between Professor Rosie Harding of Birmingham University Law School, Amanda Keeling of Leeds University, Sophie O’Connell of Salisbury law firm Wilsons, and Philipa Bragman and Andrew Lee from self-advocacy organisation People First, which is for and run by people with learning difficulties.
Professor Harding said: “There’s this massive unmet legal need in terms of translating quite complex legal ideas into accessible formats to help people with learning disabilities access legal services and find out what their rights are.
“When you provide information in an easy-to-read format, most people will go to it first, because it is quicker to read. This means easy read information is useful for people with low literacy, whether or not they have a learning disability, and for those for whom English is not their first language.”
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