Public Funding for Solicitors Pro Bono Group

"Advice agencies, support providers, clearinghouses and public legal education providers all exist to help people when they need support to solve their legal problems. However, accessing this complex network of support is complicated. For many citizens, if they are unable to access the services that can provide them with timely and comprehensive advice or effective representation, they are left without a clear understanding of their legal matter or their options. This often results in the situation getting worse. For the volunteers and staff who provide the support, there is an urgent, unmet need to explore this complex network of interlocking and overlapping services. For these service providers, knowing where the client has been before, what advice they've received, whether they have acted on that advice, what assistance other agencies can provide, whether the other agencies have capacity and the justice outcomes of the clients they help is crucial. Despite the efforts of a number of commercial enterprises developing relatively focussed applications and the widespread introduction of a variety of client management software systems, no products or services have been developed that can effectively collate this crucial data. In order to advise clients on which service provider they might need to access, where they are, when it is best to do so and importantly how much that service might cost; a system is required which can provide an overview of the complex network for any clients and all of the different advisors. This project is designed to test the feasibility of creating such a resource and adding functionality by deriving from the transaction data created, a picture of what can be done and ultimately what has best served particular client groups. Above all the project is intended to help volunteers and staff provide support that is intelligent and responsive. This project will explore both the possibility of advice charities sharing data to understand their user's journeys and where users would benefit from being guided into the wider legal services market. This will support advice charities to form stronger relationships with private legal services providers to appropriately direct clients who can afford services. It is expected that this will increase the number of users of the legal services market but also have the effect of diversifying service provision."