Despite doctrine that assumes to the contrary, the structure of the modern justice system rests on the assumption that individuals can both access and deploy the kind of legal knowledge that used to be the exclusive province of legal professionals. A great deal of research focuses on methods of providing access to professional legal knowledge. Little has focused on whether and how lay individuals can deploy such knowledge in, for example, litigating small claims court cases. This project will investigate whether and how lay individuals can deploy professional legal knowledge when questions of access to knowledge are eliminated. The project is innovative in evaluating the deployment of lay legal knowledge via a field experiment, a method that can illuminate causation and that has as yet been seldom used within legal sites. The project is also methodologically innovative in integrating insights from multiple disciplines concerning cognition and action into the deployment of legal advice. The field experiment consists of two comparisons: (i) a self-help assistance packet addressing the legal aspects of household legal problems versus an offer of representation from legal professionals, and (ii) a self-help packet covering good household management practices versus telephone or in-person household management counseling. The self-help packets will be mailed directly to lay individuals to eliminate the question of whether people had access to legal knowledge. By comparing the outcomes experienced by individuals randomized to the packets versus outcomes experienced by individuals randomized to professional and quasi-professional assistance, the investigators will discover whether and how lay individuals can deploy professional legal knowledge.
The project addresses important issues concerning the use of legal knowledge in a deprofessionalized environment. The investigators will disseminate their findings broadly, ensuring it is useful to relevant policymakers. The project will also contribute to the training of scholars in multi-disciplinary methods in the social sciences.
