Introduction

In Chapter 6, we discussed our quantitative experiments and concluded that procedural justice matters in the context of online interactions; this and the next chapter will discuss the question of access. How accessible is online justice? We ask this question in the context of the data discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, which explored people's interactions with the digital justice space. This chapter enquires into how those who administer justice, those who provide advice and those who use the online justice system experience it. In so doing, we consider how the use of technology in the justice system is shaped by, and may reshape, people's orientations and sensibilities towards law (Merry 1990; Cowan 2004; Hertogh 2004; Silbey 2005) and technology (Elvidge 2018). We use our data to examine, through people's (non)digital journeys, in what way consciousness of how we think and feel about the law relates to our capability of acting upon it. In Chapters 4 and 5, we have considered helpseekers’ different levels of access, different levels of capabilities, and different levels of abilities in relation to (non)access. In Chapter 6, we discussed our quantitative experiment and showed the importance of procedural justice and legitimacy for online and offline encounters with the justice system.

In this chapter, we move on to the themes emerging from the interview data with judges, lawyers and case workers and contrast these with our user data through the lens of digital legal consciousness (digital and legal capabilities). The data we draw upon for this chapter are the SEND Tribunal and Property Chamber interviews and the survey responses of the advice sector, case handlers, judges and users. Based on the four basic types of digital legal consciousness (Chapter 1), we identified our user responses to be a combination of Type 1 and Type 2, discussed in the next section. Examples of Types 3 and 4 will be discussed in Chapter 8. As mentioned, there are no clear boundaries separating these types in real life; they merely serve here as a foundation to build upon. For example, a Type 3 user could take part in a tribunal hearing, assisted by a representative or other supporter, but our dataset did not contain them.