Author Archives: Kari Boyle

November 8, 2020

Youth Voices: A Call to Action for Family Lawyers and Mediators–Part 1

Categories: Access to Justice, child rights, Empathy, Innovation, User Centred, youth engagement

This is Part 1 of a two-part piece focusing on how family lawyers and mediators can participate in and support the Youth Voices Initiative. It was originally published in September 2020 on Slaw.ca, Canada’s Online Legal Magazine and republished with permission. It has been 10 years since Brené Brown published her book The Gifts of Imperfection. […]

July 1, 2020

Youth Voices Initiative Update – Launch Coming Soon!

Categories: Access to Justice, child rights, human centred design, Innovation, News, youth engagement

It has been a few months since our last update on the Youth Voices Initiative (March 7).  The world has changed in fundamental ways since then!  But we have been continuing our work and we’d like to describe some of the highlights so far and provide a peek into the exciting things coming next!! The […]

March 11, 2020

More Lessons from the Therapy Dog

Categories: Access to Justice, customer journey mapping, Empathy, human behaviour, human centred design, Systems thinking, User Centred

Two years ago I published a piece on slaw.ca entitled Seeing (And Feeling) the Family Justice System Through the Eyes of the Therapy Dog about Ollie the therapy dog who visited the Kamloops courthouse on “family remand day”. One comment on that post really stuck in my mind.  It was from a family lawyer who […]

January 10, 2020

Two important surveys

Categories: Access to Justice, Innovation, News

This is a reminder to complete two important surveys affecting access to justice in British Columbia: The National Action Committee’s annual survey – deadline extended to January 17th. This is your opportunity to have your A2J initiatives included in the 2019 Report on Canada’s Justice Development Goals. The Law Society of BC’s Futures Task Force […]

January 10, 2020

Collaborating with our Northern Ireland Colleagues on Human-Centred Design

Categories: Access to Justice, convening, customer journey mapping, Empathy, human centred design, Innovation, Uncategorized, User Centred

In the summer of 2019, the Lab received a very warm invitation to work with a group from Ulster University in Northern Ireland. Led by Professor Gráinne McKeever, the group was eager to use a human-centred design process as part of their research project to create and test supports for litigants in person (“LIPS”) in […]

June 19, 2019

What is Old is New Again – Lessons from To Kill a Mockingbird

Categories: child rights, human centred design, User Centred

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 […]

February 25, 2019

Early assessment, triage and referral – dawn is breaking for families experiencing separation and divorce

Categories: Access to Justice, customer journey mapping, human centred design, Innovation, Triage, User Centred

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 […]

September 4, 2018

Through the Eye of a Fish: The importance of empathy

Categories: Access to Justice, Empathy, human behaviour, human centred design, Innovation, User Centred

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 […]