The Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) Volume 3: A New Perspective on Legal Need and Legal Capability
The third volume reports on the links between legal need and legal capability. It investigates the impact and implications of legal capability on legal problem experience and resolution.
Summary
This third volume of our PULS reporting builds on the accounts of problem experience and legal capability set out in the first two volumes. It presents the findings of new analyses of the relationships between both legal capability and demographics and:
- justiciable problem-solving behaviour
- whether people obtain the legal assistance they need
- legal need and unmet legal need
- satisfaction with the progress/outcome of efforts to resolve justiciable problems.
Legal capability is the knowledge, skills and attributes required to decide whether and how to use the law and legal processes. This report offers a unique analysis of the complex interplay between legal capability, legal problems, demographics and legal need. The investigation provides important new evidence of how legal capability affects justiciable problem resolution and the difference legal and other advice services can make.
The relationships between legal capability, justiciable problem-solving behaviour and experience set out in this report provides a rich resource of evidence for policy and practice. This includes understanding the disadvantages that follow from disparities in levels of relevant capabilities and the detriment this may entail.
The volume explores how people’s skills in managing a legal problem, experience of the system, and what attitudes they have about the law can affect behaviour and outcomes, including how satisfied people are with the progress and resolution of the legal matters they face. The findings clearly demonstrate that legal capability matters.
This report yields further insights to suggest new directions for reform and enable public legal assistance services to best meet people’s needs.
Key findings
Implications and way forward
The third volume reports on the links between legal need and legal capability. It investigates the impact and implications of legal capability on legal problem experience and resolution.
The third volume reports on the links between legal need and legal capability. It investigates the impact and implications of legal capability on legal problem experience and resolution.
Publication resources
Discover how people understand and engage with the law
The Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) is ground-breaking research to understand legal capability, attitudes, and experience of the law in Victoria.
Related publications
You may be interested in these other research publications.
Psychological distress and mental illness have been shown to be among the factors most powerfully associated with problems arising in people’s lives that raise legal issues.
Single parents have been identified as being particularly vulnerable to experiencing multiple substantial legal problems.
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Dr McDonald’s paper considers the question of just how much “legal” understanding or help different people require to enjoy access to justice, and just what type of research evidence we need to know.
The full PULS questionnaire along with commentary on the questions.
How People see the Law, Lawyers and Courts in Australia.
Explore how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them, and how they progress and conclude (if they conclude).
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Understand better justice
Data and empirical evidence to help understand access to justice and build a better justice system.