Sustainable Legal Aid and Access to Justice: A Supply Chain Approach

Many countries struggle to maintain an affordable and sustainable legal aid system. This paper describes an interactive consultation process that was organized to develop proposals for increasing access to justice while limiting costs for governments as well as for users of the legal system. During the process, some strategies were identified that are unlikely to be effective in increasing access to justice and limiting costs. The more promising strategies tend to focus on improving the entire supply chain of fair solutions for legal needs, from legal advice to settlement negotiations and court interventions. These strategies can indeed lead to savings on the legal aid budget and can improve access to justice at the same time. However, the ensuing policies are not easy to implement, because they require a form of coordination that is new for the legal sector.