Funder: Arts & Humanities Research Council
Awarded: £2,200
Duration: 2024
Staff involved: Gráinne McKeever, Lucy Royal-Dawson , John McCord
Description
Following on from our research on how litigants in person (LIPs) are often alienated by the justice system this project focused on two outputs: (1) developing and delivering training to employment tribunal judges and (2) creating a Charter for Effective Participation for solicitors and LIPs.
For employment tribunal judges we developed a bespoke peer-to-peer training session which included piloting the checklist of participation that was developed in our earlier research project on The Ten Descriptors of Legal Participation — a Q Methods study. Through an interactive workshop with judges we adapted the guidelines to match their practice and jurisdictional requirements.
We also worked with the Law Society to deliver a human-centred design (HCD) process to create a set of guidelines on the respective rights and responsibilities for LIPs and solicitors in a case where one party is represented and the other is not. The Law Society is the professional regulator for solicitors in Northern Ireland. Through the HCD process we worked with solicitors, LIPs, McKenzie Friends and members of different voluntary and statutory organisations to develop a Charter for Effective Participation and Communication between Solicitors and Litigants in Person in Northern Ireland. Our guidelines are publicly available and can be used by parties in family and civil disputes as well as employment tribunals.
All of the research outputs from this project and related work are available on the Litigants in Person project website.