These are both portents of a new era for this blog.

The future of the blog is shaky, but more promising each day. Lois Gander, PLE legend and University of Alberta professor, will take interim control. Within the next two weeks, I hope to work with Lois to recruit a small team of contributors and editors. The emails and votes on the “fate of the blog” poll have made it clear that there’s a strong interest in keeping this thing going.

I don’t have any substantive content for today (though I would like to quickly link to another blog’s entry yesterday complimenting the Éducaloi and CLEO websites). Rather, I just want to thank everyone. The main reason I’ve been living in Canada for the last nine months was to focus full-time on public legal education. That work has been so tremendously productive—thanks almost entirely to the help and support of all of you here—that I could never have expected how much I accomplished in such a short time.

But the research is ultimately no more than half of it. I’ve also been here to understand this country, to see it from coast to coast, and to exchange experiences, culture, and dreams between the U.S. and Canada. For doing that, the people I’ve met and worked with—especially my main readership here—could not be beat. In every place I went, I was shown nothing less than phenomenal hospitality. You have made my time here unforgettable and enriched my life and career like no other nine months could have.

Thank you.

When the field of PLEI in Canada first began to take shape in the 1970s, PLEI truly was a movement—the leaders and the literature in the field often called it that. A grassroots, almost revolutionary spirit jumps out at you from the PLE artifacts from this period. Ideas and innovative practices spread across the country seemingly by magic, and with no help from the Internet or even regular national conferences.

As the eighties arrived, the movement grew more mature but also more robust. The Canadian Law Information Council (CLIC) (later renamed as the Canadian Legal Information Centre) assumed a clearinghouse and coordinating role, establishing a staffed secretariat devoted exclusively to PLEI. The federal Department of Justice, which had been doing and funding PLEI in roundabout ways since 1972, took on a massive role in 1984 by becoming the impetus and pocketbook behind “completing the network”—ensuring at least one sole-purpose PLEI provider in every province and territory.

The 1990s, though, brought with them the closing of CLIC and a major national recession. The major PLEI groups in Canada not only scrambled for money (in some cases fighting among themselves over short-term project-based funding), but now also lacked a staffed national organization committed to doing the research and coordination necessary to fuel the field’s development. Though the Public Legal Education Association of Canada (PLEAC), an unstaffed national networking association for providers, had been operating since 1987, neither PLEAC nor the federal government has since taken over the tasks the CLIC’s dissolution left undelegated.

Many of those who weathered the 1990s working for a PLE organization point to the recessions as the main cause for PLEI’s hiccups during that time—hiccups that the field may not yet have completely recovered from. But, I wonder: what about all of the things CLIC was doing? Does the field need to find a way to get these done today, or else risk another crisis?

Here is a list, from CLIC’s 1978-1980 annual report, of the things it undertook to provide for the national PLEI movement:

• a support network capable of providing materials and information on PLEI projects
• a mechanism to identify and review available PLEI materials and to identify gaps in the literature which need to be filled and to act as a catalyst to ensure that the gaps are filled
• development, support and follow-up on a series of conferences covering the broad PLEI field
• identification of the need for additional research into the impact of PLEI programs and the preparation of professionals interested in PLEI activities
• a manual to identify sources of funds for PLEI projects and to assist applicants and funders in their roles
• identification of the legal information needs of special interest groups at the national level
• an annotated bibliography covering audio-visual and print materials for the non-lawyer

How many of those things are not getting done today? Which of them must be done if the field is going to grow?

Here are some PLE-related guidelines from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in the States. The LSC is the quasi-federal, major funder of civil legal aid in the U.S. Since the 1990s, LSC has released “performance criteria” for its grantees. Here’s some of what the 2007 edition of the Performance Criteria [397 KB PDF] has to say about PLE activities:

• INDICATORS OF SUCCESS
  • The organization compiles and uses materials that others have already produced.
  • It selects a clearly defined audience for PLE activity, and one that is consistent with program goals and desired outcomes.
  • It uses the most appropriate delivery methods for the subject matter, the audience, and available resources.
  • It communicates in understandable ways that are culturally and linguistically relevant the the audience.
  • It periodically evaluates its PLE activities and compares the costs for the results with the costs of other ways of getting the same results.
  • It tries to assess actual outcomes.

• AREAS OF INQUIRY
  • Are your PLE activity’s objectives clear and reasonable?
  • Is the program creative in its use of print, audiovisual media, or other available technology?
  • Did you consider the target audience when you selected your delivery methods?
  • Are you evaluating the program with regard to its costs?
  • Do you collaborate with other providers and social services agencies for writing and distribution of PLE?

These LSC criteria were drafted with an eye towards the ABA’s Standards for the Provision of Civil Legal Aid, which I summarized a couple weeks ago. Are these criteria more or less helpful than those standards? Do either of them have relevance to Canadian sole-purpose PLE providers?

And because Justice Canada’s core funding commitment for sole-purpose PLE ($70,000 a year to each provincially designated organization, in most cases) has not increased since the late 1980s, law foundations become a more important influence on Canadian PLE with each passing year.

Although PLE organizations benefit tremendously from the law foundations—nearly all of which have “legal education” of some kind explicitly in their legislative funding mandate—there are two glaring difficulties with PLE and law foundations:

1. Law foundations’ revenue, coming primarily from interest on lawyers’ trust accounts, is tied extremely closely to interest rates and provincial economic conditions.
2. Although law foundations talk to each other, as funders they are often islands and do not collaborate with Justice Canada or other funders on PLE issues.

Difficulty #1 has proved all too real a drawback for several PLE organizations, who have seen their core funding plummet in leaner economic years. Difficulty #2 has been a matter of concern in several PLE reports, including Marie Moliner’s 1997 Public Legal Education and Information (PLEI) Review for Justice Canada [311 KB PDF]. Moliner noted that contact between the law foundations and Justice Canada was “sporadic” and recommended that Justice Canada do something about that.

Has Canadian sole-purpose PLE come to rely too heavily on law foundations for core financial support? If so, is there any realistic alternative for organizations who want to adjust their funding picture? And even if the heavy reliance is inevitable, should PLEAC or PLE organizations individually push law foundations to interact more with Justice Canada and other major PLE funders?

And one bonus question: do law foundations need to clarify—for themselves, if no one else—exactly what “legal education” means in their mandates?

One possibility for this blog’s future would be to hand off the reins to a designated successor. A similar option would be to assemble a collective of several authors, including myself, who would all contribute content. Or, of course, I could simply let the blog go dark.

I’d like to get your feedback. I am going to try using the poll below to do it. Please don’t be shy! Click on the statement you most agree with. Your responses will directly determine the future of this blog. Comments are welcome, too.

That Gander quote is from 2003. Fifteen years earlier, the Canadian Law Information Council (CLIC) said the same thing: “Attempts to define PLE have not been entirely satisfactory.” Going back even earlier still, folks were just as frustrated: “Even the people in the field have failed to reach agreement on many of the terms used to describe the field as a whole.” And this is not just a Canadian phenomenon—in a recent “scoping report” on PLE from the UK, the authors noted: “The need for a definition of PLE has been stressed. There is demand for clarity regarding what it might comprise.”

These statements belie, however, that on an everyday basis, people are having no trouble understanding roughly what PLE is. Isn’t it, quite straightforwardly, just “education” about “legal” topics for the “public”?

The problem, though, as Gander and others have pointed out, is that nobody can agree just what “education” should include, just what counts as a “legal” topic and what doesn’t, or just who the “public” is exactly. And even if you get beyond the individual words, the whole phrase—”public legal education”—can be found referring to any of a cluster of things:

• the materials, like booklets, DVDs, and websites, that are created to educate the public about law (as in “I’m going down to the rack at the library to pick up some of that public legal education”)
• any activities, from a conversation with a bartender to a episode of Law and Order to a class on wills and estates, that informs people about law and the legal system (as in “the public legal education going on among friends over coffee might be the most common”)
• all the people and organizations who are doing the activities and producing the materials that educate people about the law (as in “Canadian public legal education is a mostly female world”)
• the concept that it is important to build a public that understands law and the legal system (as in “public legal education is either related to access to justice or a part of it”)

Definitions of PLE have run into trouble because both (1) of taking controversially broad or limited views of “public,” “legal,” or “education,” and (2) of leaning too much to either the “concept” sense of PLE or the “materials, activities, and people” sense of PLE.

But in the end, PLE doesn’t have it much worse off than any other field. After all, what is “medicine”? Or “marketing”? Or, how about this description of the problems that the field of adult education has had defining itself:

Those trying to describe adult education as a field of education activity often have been frustrated. Lyman Bryson said, “[Adult education] has always been carried on by a wide variety of agencies, for a variety of purposes, and with many different kinds of people. For this reason, some critics have called it formeless and without direction.”

More than fifty years after Bryson wrote those words, adult education continues to be called, at least by some critics, formless and without direction.

Still, PLE, unlike medicine, marketing, and even adult education, has not yet secured a long-term place in the minds of the public, the policies of the government, and the budgets of its funders. Rallying around a single definition could be an important step in securing that place. Does PLE, the field, need to cut out its linguistic bickering so that it can agree on a common definition of itself? Or, perhaps, is it that the term itself is bad?

SEE ALSO
• My blog entry on help from health education for a PLE definition
• Google searches for “what is public legal education” and “public legal education is”

A short list of some of PLE’s closest cousins might include:

• Health education: probably the most advanced cousin, and a field I have looked to several times on this blog. This area gets called both “public health education” and “community health education,” and is closely related to “health promotion.” Providers network through the Canadian Public Health Association and the Society for Public Health Education in the U.S.
• Consumer and financial education: a giant field seemingly occupied by few sole-purpose nonprofit providers. The federal government, instead, has taken a major role here. The Canadian Foundation for Economic Education may be a central networking point in this field—I can’t tell.
• Environmental education: at times in PLE’s history, environmental education has been a partner and a model. This field is gigantic and growing, and independent nonprofit providers network through the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication (EECOM).
• Human rights education: maybe PLE’s closest cousin, major players in this rapidly developing field are Amnesty International and Equitas.
• Civic, citizenship, and democracy education: another very close cousin to PLE, and one that often blends in with modern Canadian PLE programming. The Citizenship Education Research Network is one group that might be networking players in this area.

There are others, as well—peace education and public science education, for example. What ties all of them together are related issues (all tackle subjects that are social, political, and everyday), similar strategies, and common problems. All of these fields experience the tangled benefits and frustrations that arise out of the interplay of government and nonprofit players, limited funding, and pervasive misinformation.

What can PLE learn from these other fields? What can PLEAC learn from its counterparts in these other movements? Where are the points of potential partnership between PLE providers and this universe of other, related providers?

I suspect that some Canadian PLE providers are more advanced in their web delivery strategies, and that these best practices will seem obvious. Nevertheless, here they are, summarized:

1. Contact information, in the form of at least a mailing address (and preferably an email address and telephone number), should be listed clearly on the website and ideally on every page.
2. Dates on substantive content, indicating the time of preparation or last review, should be included—and automated dating systems should not be used.
3. Likewise, jurisdiction information, noting for what geographic areas the information is accurate, ought to be included.
4. Sites should also feature a conspicuous notice that legal information is not legal advice.
5. There should be links to other sites and resources that might also help users.
6. Where possible and appropriate, substantive content should be accompanied by citations and links to relevant case law and legislation.
7. Referrals, in the form of information on how and where to get additional help and advice, should be provided.
8. Permission for any content used from other sources and sites should be obtained.
9. The terms and conditions of site use ought to be conspicuous.
10. And a clear and conspicuous privacy statement should be included as well.

How helpful and complete is this list? Is this even useful to Canadian PLE providers, or could PLEAC members benefit from a more advanced set of best practices?

At a broad, national, or international level, it might be useful to build a comprehensive list of PLE rationales. A full list would be useful not just so that others can pick from among them as they form mission statements and write proposals and advocacy papers—it could also to help us get a sense of the surprisingly wide scope of what public legal education is about.

For this entry, I’ve worked up the start of a list of PLE rationales, compiled from other lists from across the years. The list quickly got so long and unwieldy that I’ve tried to group the rationales into categories—you can tell me how well I’ve done:

RATIONALE GROUP I:
PLE serves to fulfill some basic presumptions and prerequisites of legal and societal systems

• The individual
  • The law affects everybody and in everyday ways; thus, knowledge of the law and its processes is a basic life skill.
  • The law presumes that everyone knows the law, so people must have a fair opportunity to actually know it.
  • Even to simply identify legal problems and participate in necessary legal processes, an individual needs a basic understanding of the law and legal processes.
• The legal system
  • The legal system requires informed and involved citizenry if it is to be a system that is responsive to the needs, concerns and priorities of the nation.
  • The legal system needs legally literate citizens in order to maintain public confidence in the system.
  • The legal system also needs legally literate citizens if it is to operate fairly.
• The democratic system of governance
  • Participation in the democratic process requires basic legal competence

RATIONALE GROUP II:
PLE reduces problems and friction in the legal system and society

• Compliance
  • PLE gives people a fair opportunity at complying with the law, rather than breaking it simply out of ignorance.
  • A public knowledgeable of its legal responsibilities may be less likely to enegage in conduct, civil or criminal, requiring resolution by the legal system.
• Prevention
  • PLE can help people avoid disputes and plan transactions in ways that will reduce legal problems.
• Self-help
  • PLE helps people deal with disputes when they cannot be or were not avoided.
  • PLE is needed for those who cannot or will not get a lawyer, so that they can navigate formal legal processes on their own.
• Legal system efficiency
  • PLE helps people to be more efficient users of the courts, other tribunals, and other entities of the justice system.

RATIONALE GROUP III:
PLE contributes to progressive developments in the legal system, justice, and society

• Access to justice and equality
  • PLE improves access to justice by supplementing other legal services and helping particular disadvantaged groups understand their rights and obligations and how to act on them.
  • Equality before law requires special efforts to reach groups with barriers to understanding law (language, geography, social attidues, cultural background, financial status).
• Law reform
  • Development of current law requires basic legal competence—people need to know to act on their rights if illegal practices are to be ended.
  • A public knowledgeable of its legal rights may be more apt to seek redress for a wrong.
• Civic engagement
  • PLE contributes to active citizenship and social cohesion.
  • PLE helps produce an informed citizenry who can then take an active part in the democratic processes of society.
• Social change
  • PLE can be an integral part of community organizing for community and social change.
  • Education is a method for empowering individuals and communities to work for a better life and a better world.

RATIONALE GROUP IV:
PLE counteracts other pervasive forces that mystify law

• Hyperregulation and complexity
  • There are more laws than ever before, and almost every aspect of life is now regulated, therefore need legal information that is easy to understand and access now more than ever.
  • The language and processes of the law are unusually (though perhaps needlessly) complex, requiring an extra effort to simplify them for the general public.
• Misinformation
  • The mass media and other sources of popular information about law and the legal system are often inaccurate, and responsible PLE is needed to counteract this misinformation.

RATIONALE GROUP V:
A mixed bag of other rationales

• Community building: PLE brings people together to learn and to share their problems and solutions, thus increasing bonds of community.
• Legal profession benefits: PLE builds understanding of and confidence in the legal profession.
• Professional development for legal workers: lawyers and legal workers engaged in PLE activities improve their skills in communicating with a general audience.
• Marketing for lawyers: PLE activities help lawyers market their services and identify people in need of legal advice.
• Empirical evidence: Legal needs surveys show that a significant percentage of people do nothing to resolve the legal components of their personal problems, and in many cases the reason they do nothing is because they don’t know their rights, obligations, or opportunities, or how to get legal help.
• Demand: The people, collectively and individually, do want and will use information on the law and legal process.

There are, I’m sure, many more. Please consider adding your favorite to the list by leaving a comment.