Access to Justice and Information Ethics

The lack of access to justice in Ontario is an issue that has wide-reaching consequences. Law librarians can play a role in addressing existing barriers to access. This paper discusses how law librarians can positively contribute to this issue of access to justice and begins with a review of the existing barriers facing the public in pursuing legal research. Following this, it discusses how librarians can uplift the public’s right to information as it relates to both professional and information ethics, library neutrality, and the access to justice movement. Lastly, the paper discusses public libraries as a field with the potential to service the access to justice movement by providing support such as public training and free access to legal information. It challenges law librarians to consider serving the public outside of their organizations’ mandates with both passive and active information-sharing ideas, followed by examples of successful collaboration between law librarians and the public from Law Librarians of New England (LLNE) and the Law Society of Saskatchewan.