Developing a portfolio of financially sustainable, scalable basic legal service models – Final report

This study develops a framework for thinking about how basic legal service interventions addressing problems of a civil and administrative nature can be taken to scale in a sustainable manner to enable improved access to justice for people living in the most vulnerable Low Income Countries (LICs) and/or Fragile and Conflict-affected States (FCAS).

The framework is built around three key questions:

  • What do we know about the unit costs of basic legal services and how can we calculate them;
  • How can scaled up legal services be financed sustainably; and
  • What are the political conditions that enable justice models to be taken to scale?

The study analyses these questions in the context of 17 basic legal service interventions, 12 in LIC and MIC countries and 5 in HIC country contexts, drawing also upon lessons from the supply of basic health and education services, but recognising that the justice sector is unique due to a multitude of factors. These factors include high politicisation (lying at the heart of the relationship between the state and the people); institutional complexity (fragmented across a range of institutions); plurality (state and non-state systems); opaqueness (demand not always visible); functional complexity (types of legal service provision) and heterogeneity of (user) need.

Year Published: 2015
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Uploaded on: Sep 06, 2016
Last Updated: Apr 19, 2017
Issues: Community Paralegals, Generalist Legal Services Tool Type: Reports / Research Method: Research Languages: English Regions: > Global