Measuring the Perceived (In)accessibility of Courts and Lawyers

Abstract

Although the majority of those who face a civil justice problem will not attend court or seek advice from a lawyer, access to courts and legal services is critical to ensuring equal access to justice. This significance is captured in UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 and in efforts to measure progress against this goal by reference to the rate at which those with a dispute access formal or informal dispute resolution mechanisms. While the public's attitudes toward courts and lawyers have been implicated as determinants of use, there are no robust standardized scales to measure these attitudes. This study uses modern psychometric methods to develop two scales to measure the Perceived Inaccessibility of Courts (PIC) and of Lawyers (PIL). Drawing on relevant theoretical frameworks, we administered an item pool of 40 attitude questions to a sample of 1846 adults across Australia. Principal component analysis was used to identify attitude domains, followed by Rasch analysis to construct scales with acceptable psychometric properties, and generalized linear modeling to relate scales to experience and explore construct validity. Our substantive findings document the role of first- and second-hand experience of courts and lawyers on attitudes and show the importance of positive experiences and accounts of courts and lawyers in enhancing perceptions of accessibility.