LSS website helps family lawyers.

by John Simpson

Providing accessible, simple legal information to help your family law clients understand the process may seem like an idealistic concept, but that is exactly what the Legal Services Society Family Law in British Columbia website (www.familylaw.lss.bc.ca) can help you do. The site aims to provide accurate legal information to help answer your clients’ questions about family law using language that is clear and easily understood, while steering away from the traditional method of “words on a screen.”

The website can also help remedy one of the big obstacles to understanding the legal system, which is the fact that clients receive a lot of their background information from unreliable sources – such as television programs and other popular media. Through the use of fact sheets, videos such as Family Matters in Supreme Court and other multimedia resources, the LSS family law website can help lawyers with this challenging task, in turn creating a more informed client.

But the site is not just about explaining the B.C. court system. It is also a way for users with family law issues, ranging from divorce and separation through to abuse, to find the information they need – all in the one place. Similarly, lawyers can use the site to find helpful information for their clients, which they can then pass on to help explain legal processes.

“We don’t just want to give information to the traditional print media audience. We want to present information in lots of different ways,” says LSS family law website lead editor, Winnifred Assmann.

Embracing a diverse communication concept has allowed the site to include multimedia features, such as videos and audio clips about court and legal processes, as well as links to other LSS publications and self-help guides. The site also contains online fact sheets, which offer a brief background and explanation of a legal issue or situation; court forms; and plain-language explanations of legislation and court rules.

Specialized publications for Aboriginal clients, youth, and grandparents are also included on the site, along with links to other resources that could help those clients, such as material about sponsorship breakdown and benefits and rights for seniors. Information is also available in many languages including Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

Surveys of users have shown that the resources available on the site are incredibly useful to people without the help of counsel, but how do they assist lawyers?

“There are a lot of ways the site can help lawyers,” Ms. Assmann says. “For example, lawyers can explain an issue to their clients and then they might give them fact sheets to back-up what they’ve just explained. That way they’re not going over and over the same info – which saves time for the lawyer and the client.”

This provides clients with a more thorough understanding of court processes and gives them another avenue to process the information.

“If a client is not particularly web-savvy then you can print out and give them a fact sheet, or give them a copy of an audio-visual piece to watch at home,” she explains. “But if they have lots of questions and want to research everything, then this site is ideal. It means they can research what they need to know and then have all those initial questions answered, but they still have the lawyer working with them.”

To see how the LSS family law website can work for you and your clients, visit www.familylaw.lss.bc.ca.

John Simpson, LSS Manager of Community and Publishing Services. www.familylaw.lss.bc.ca

This article was published in the August 2009 issue of BarTalk. © 2009 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.