Measuring legal capability

Despite the importance of understanding legal capability, the development of relevant measures is recent.

Measuring different aspects of legal capability is not simple, and approaches will vary. Some things can be asked about directly - for example, specific skills associated with digital capability or functional literacy. Others can’t be observed directly (for example legal confidence or perceived accessibility of lawyers).

This challenge can be addressed by constructing scales to tap into latent traits (in this case, aspects of legal capability) and luckily there is a whole field of study to help with this – psychometrics.

Psychometrics is concerned with the theory and method of measurement, and in particular, measuring things you can’t directly observe. As a result, it is crucial in helping to capture many domains of legal capability.