Announcing “The Access Revolution” Blog

Today’s blog post is written by NSRLP Director Julie Macfarlane.

Announcing The Access Revolution Blog

Today we are announcing the launch of the rebranded NSRLP Blog, which I started during my initial research into the SRL experience (the first blog was The Two Solitudes, posted in June 2012). Many of you have read the blog faithfully for the past five and a half years, and I think you are going to be very excited about our plans moving forward.

It was always my intention that the blog could be a place where SRLs – and indeed all legal system users – could exchange and dialogue with justice system professionals: lawyers, judges, policymakers, and others. A little naïve? Perhaps, especially in light of those “two solitudes” I first wrote about.

For the last 5 years, I have written most of the posts, while we have sometimes published guest blogs from lawyers and SRLs. We have decided that in 2019 we need a new, more adventurous, and more inclusive model.

We are “rebranding” the NSRLP blog as a collaboration between SRLs and justice professionals in a very real and direct way. This feels like the right time for this step, because the chasm between the two solitudes – while still there – is slowly beginning to narrow.

More and more lawyers now contact NSRLP with offers of material written for SRLs, coaching and unbundling assistance, and to tell us about their concerns over case outcomes that sometimes seem punitive and stigmatizing to SRLs, already vulnerable. We are proud to work alongside supportive judges who, before and since the landmark Supreme Court decision in Pintea, are committed to changing the way that courts respond to those without representation. The SRL community is becoming organized, with local support groups and some amazing citizen advocates for Access to Justice (most of whom are former SRLs) committed to making the system better for the next person. The October 2018 Dialogue Event demonstrated how much change had taken place – the crackling tension and mutual discomfort of the first Dialogue Event in 2013 was replaced with sometimes challenging but always constructive and committed efforts to understand one another’s experience, and to discuss A2J solutions that made sense to both users and justice professionals.

So, we are ready for a collaborative blog platform that will publish posts by SRLs and members of the public, and justice system professionals; perhaps there will be some joint posts. Similarly, we hope that the comments and discussions that follow will come from both system users and justice professionals. We hope to publish comments from both users and professionals, and to that end encourage everyone commenting on blog posts to read our moderation policy, which is designed to make that discussion respectful, but also move along with concise and appropriate commentary.

The new blog will have a name (which was proposed by mediator Cathy Wills of Kingston, Ontario – congratulations to Cathy, and thanks to everyone for all your wonderful suggestions!):

The Access Revolution Blog
Dispatches from the frontlines

We are also announcing today that the blog will now be overseen by a small steering group made up of the following people:

• Julie (me)
• Dayna Cornwall, NSRLP Project Manager
• Randi Druzin, a former SRL, journalist, and author
• Jeff Rose-Martland, an SRL, and citizen advocate
• Chief Justice Robert Bauman of the British Columbia Court of Appeal
• Bill Bogart, Distinguished University Professor, University of Windsor, NSRLP Advisory Board member, and author

We shall aim to publish 3-4 blog posts a month, and are actively seeking submissions. You can read the submission guidelines here (for instance, we request submissions be limited to 1200 words max.)

We are so grateful to the members of the steering group for their commitment to this project, and the work they have already done with NSRLP to get the new blog ready to launch today.

The work of the steering group will focus on ensuring a diverse, engaging, constructive, and bold collection of writing by those historically separated into “insiders” and “outsiders”. The intention of our effort is to break down those barriers, and enable a genuinely collaborative platform that seeks to build understanding, and to flesh out practical solutions to Canada’s A2J crisis. This is the only platform anywhere in the world that we are aware of that is trying to do this.

If you have an idea for a blog post, please refer to our submission guidelines, and get in touch using the subject line “Blog Submission” (representingyourself@gmail.com).