Prof Jackie Hodgson and Asher Flynn from Monash have a new edited collection on 'Access to Justice and Legal Aid: Comparative Perspectives on Unmet Legal Need' published by Hart.

This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines.

As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales, and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need.

The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way that law is now done in the 21st century.

The book is essential reading for all those interested in access to justice and legal aid.

The University of Warwick will be holding a conference on 19 March 2014 for the partnership project with Monash University: Access to Justice: A Comparative Analysis of cuts to the civil and criminal Legal Aid systems in England, Wales and Victoria.

The conference will include academics, researchers and practitioners and will look at the impact of civil and criminal legal aid cuts, focusing on:

• The changing face of the legal profession
• The lawyer-client relationship and
• The broader social consequences of the cuts.

Colleagues from Monash University will also be attending and providing a comparative perspective on recent legal aid reforms. A second conference will be hosted by Monash University in July 2014.

Jackie Hodgson (Warwick) and Asher Flynn (Monash) have been awarded A$13,398 + £7,165 from the Monash-Warwick Alliance Seed Fund for the project: Access to Justice: A Comparative Analysis of cuts to the civil and criminal Legal Aid systems in England, Wales and Victoria, August 2013 – June 2014.
The project brings together Warwick colleagues Jackie Hodgson (PI), James Harrison, Andrew Williams and Nathalie Byrom (Co-Is) with Monash colleagues Asher Flynn (PI) Jude McCulloch, Bronwyn Naylor and Arie Freiberg (Co-Is). The study is a comparative analysis of the impact of cuts to the civil and criminal legal-aid systems operating in England, Wales and Victoria.

Carla Saltelli, from the school of Law at Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna, will be visiting from 6th October - 6th December. Whilst here, her main research focus is aimed at the development of her graduation thesis through the study of the interrogation themes in a Common Law system.
Carla will also be looking at the research differences and similarities in the study of interrogation between Common Law and Civil Law systems. Carla will be looking at reputable sources of information on Common Law's evolution of this discipline at the university Library.

A student visitor called Susanna Leonarduzzi from the University of Macerata in Italy will be visiting from 12th September – 11th November 2013. Whilst here Susanna will be doing research for her degree thesis about the corporate responsibility for environmental crimes. Susanna will be looking at the historical and cultural aspect: introduction of the regulation about corporate responsibility in UK legal system: historical period, reasons, panel discussion, evolution of the regulation from the introduction until today and previsions for the future.