International Access to Justice Forum 2025

The International Access to Justice Forum 2025 will bring together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, policy makers and court and dispute resolution experts to discuss exciting new developments and ongoing challenges in access to justice.

Building on the rich legacy of previous conferences, there will be engaging discussions, inspiring presentations, and enriching cross-border dialogue. We encourage you to participate, whether as an in-person attendee or member of the online audience.

Presentations on topics include:

• racial, gender, ethnic, religious and other forms of discrimination in the design and operation of civil justice systems
• gaps in access to justice
• impacts of new technologies
• legal professional regulatory reform
• legal needs studies climate change and civil justice
• civil justice in democratic governance.

We are particularly excited to support staff from the Victoria Law Foundation and members of the community legal sector in attending this event.

Registration is now open and further details about the 2025 Forum are available from the Center for Civil Justice website.

Our VLF contigent

Bushfires and legal needs

Yolanda Mansfield, Senior Researcher

Disasters can have a significant impact on people’s likelihood of experiencing justiciable problems and their ability to resolve them, with those most disadvantaged and vulnerable often the worst affected.

VLF’s Senior Researcher Yolanda Mansfield will share preliminary findings on the relationship between natural disasters and legal need through the experience of Australian bushfires. This new paper details the Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) findings on the significant 2019-2020 Victorian bushfire event, revealing new insights about legal problem experience and the increasing burden on communities and legal services affected by natural disasters.

Measure for Measure: Building a service delivery model of people-centred justice in Victoria, Australia

Bridget McAloon, Principal Researcher

How do you best meet legal need? Principal Researcher Bridget McAloon will speak to new research from our upcoming Measure for Measure project that explores an operational model of people-centred justice.

Through surveys and in-depth interviews with legal assistance services, courts, and other justice stakeholders, the project assembled collective knowledge to create a composite picture of what is seen to make justice solutions work for different clients and communities.

Measure for Measure is foundational work to fill critical knowledge gaps, necessary to sustain and scale up models that work and better support funding, policy and practice decisions.

Compounding needs: Legal problems, legal capability and multiple disadvantage

Dr. Hugh McDonald, Research Director

With new analysis of PULS data, Research Director Hugh McDonald will present on an upcoming paper that examines the relationship between legal problem experience and levels of disadvantage.

As disadvantage, such as long-term illness, financial distress, or disability, compounds, so too do legal and capability needs. The paper examines how legal problem-solving behaviour changes with increasing disadvantage, and how the most disadvantaged rely more on public legal assistance services to deal with justiciable problems.

The findings give rise to several implications for legal assistance practice and policy, and civil justice system operation, as well as consideration of basic democratic access to justice across the whole community.