What is Old is New Again – Lessons from To Kill a Mockingbird
I watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” again recently. As most of you know, Harper Lee wrote the novel, and the 1962 Academy Award–winning movie features Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer who defends a black man accused of the rape of a white girl. There are so many important themes in this […]
Early assessment, triage and referral – dawn is breaking for families experiencing separation and divorce
In our last post we highlighted the need for any justice design (or reform) initiative to start with a deep dive into the user experience and to involve users throughout the process. The image of the flashlight on a dark night is a stark reminder of how opaque and terrifying the current system can be […]
How is our family justice system like a flashlight on a dark night?
This recent blog post from IAALS (Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System) caught my eye and my imagination. It begins by noting the 2016 Cases Without Counsel study (Note 1) which highlighted the struggle of people trying to navigate the family justice system without their own lawyer and includes the following comment […]
Through the Eye of a Fish: The importance of empathy
The BC Family Justice Innovation Lab employs an approach we call “systemic human-centred design”. The first phase of the model is “discovery” of the experiences of the users (the people the system is intended to serve), in our case the human beings who are involved in separation and divorce in BC. We have written before […]
Using Human-Centred Design in Youth Voices Initiative
This article is re-posted from our recent contribution to Slaw dot ca, Canada’s wonderful national online legal magazine. The BC Family Justice Innovation Lab is focusing on improving the well-being of BC families and children experiencing separation and divorce. One of its ‘home-grown’ initiatives is called “Youth Voices” as it focuses on the experience and […]
Youth Voices Workshop January 28 2018 – Brief Update
We held our sensemaking and ideation workshop on the Youth Voices Initiative on January 28, 2018. We will be publishing more detailed information in this page soon but, in the meantime, we are excited to share some of the tools we used for the workshop in case they are useful for other designers. First, huge […]
Early bird discounts end Dec 31st for Unbundling Workshop January 31 2018!
Building on our previous post, we are thrilled to welcome Woody Mosten (the “father of unbundling”) as our special guest for an interactive and practical workshop in Vancouver on unbundled legal services on January 31, 2018. You can take advantage of early registration discounts until December 31st! Click here for more information and registration details. […]
The Story of the BC Family Justice Innovation Lab
Almost two years ago, our Lab received a wonderful invitation to contribute a paper to a Special Edition of the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice focusing on “access to justice & innovation”. Jane Morley QC and I (with help from many others who kindly read and re-read the article) dove into the task of […]
Unbundling Workshop in Vancouver January 31 2018
The Lab continues to support the Unbundling Initiative now that the Law Foundation funded project has wound up. Unbundled legal services are a key part of the access to justice puzzle AND a way for lawyers to begin to practice law differently – in a way that meets their personal and professional goals and values. […]
Seeking input from Kamloops families to improve the BC family justice system
The Lab is involved in supporting a new initiative which is seeking participation from family members in Kamloops, BC. The initiative seeks to improve the BC family justice system by starting with an exploration of the experiences of families who have used the system to deal with separation and divorce. The team will be in […]