Shaping the Future: New Directions for Legal Services

Publicly-funded legal services and the organization of civil justice under English Law are facing major change, and this book offers a contribution to the debate stimulated by government ideas of reforming legal aid and the civil-justice system. It combines the Legal Action Group's analysis of the current state of the civil-justice system with contributions from commentators around the world, all of whom are involved in the process of change in their own countries. Among the issues considered are whether cases can be "unbundled" so that litigants can undertake more self-representation, the best use that might be made of new technology, the role for public legal education and publicly-funded legal services in general, the future of civil litigation, and ways in which class or group actions can be handled by courts and by lawyers.