For something that plays such an important role in our daily lives, the law can be very difficult to understand.

Understanding your rights often requires expert knowledge, and professional advice can be costly. In light of this, do ordinary Australians have genuine access to justice? Are we actually able to protect our rights as enshrined by law?

Australia’s legal system is based on the rule of law, which requires that all people are able to access justice through fair and open courts. In order to access justice, people need to have both the capability to enforce rights, and access to relevant legal information that explains legal rights and responsibilities. People also need the opportunity to enforce them through unrestricted access to the appropriate services or institutions.

In Australia, we have institutions and services that are capable of solving legal problems, such as courts and law firms, but this is only half of the equation. We need to be able to access these institutions and services. When going to court requires out-of-reach expert knowledge and substantial expense, the rule of law is undermined. Currently, we are falling short.

This is by no means a new problem. Tracing the Australian legal system to its English origins shows that for hundreds of years, there has been a need for specialist advocates to help people appear before courts to resolve their disputes. The law has too often been the domain of the elite. Those who held themselves out to have specialist legal skills during the Middle Ages were either hand-picked by the monarchy or had studied at prestigious institutions such as Oxford or Cambridge. This required important connections or serious wealth, and usually both.

The emergence of lawyers as a professional body during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries only further distanced the general public from accessing the legal system. As self-proclaimed professionals, the social status of lawyers rose. They saw themselves as apart from ‘ordinary’ people. In addition, the increasingly complex legal system meant that lawyers’ expertise became essential and expensive.

This legacy underpins the many barriers to accessing justice that exist today. And it’s a real cause for concern. Access to justice is a fundamental part of a functioning legal system. It is necessary for the fair determination and enforcement of citizens’ rights by independent bodies. The civil justice system is a public good with many important benefits. This means that, like all public goods, access to the justice system must be enjoyed equally by all members of society, not just the privileged elite.

Two recent studies carried out in Australia show that this is a real problem. According to a nationwide survey carried out by the Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales in 2012, many people do not get legal help because they are not sure what to do, think it will be too stressful, or are worried it will cost too much. More recently, the Productivity Commission has also found that many people fail to seek legal assistance because they do not know whether or where to seek assistance. On top of this is the high price of private legal services. Without independent wealth or eligibility for legal aid, which the Productivity Commission estimates to only cover eight per cent of the population, legal fees can be a real obstacle to accessing justice.

Now technology-driven services have emerged to help break down the barriers that are preventing ordinary people engaging with the law. We built LawAdvisor to give everyday people both the capability and opportunity to access justice. Users can find legal information that is current, accurate and relevant to their needs, as well as answers to basic legal questions written by qualified lawyers. The platform also allows people to ask lawyers specific legal questions and, if needed, engage the services of a lawyer of their choosing, safe in the knowledge that the lawyer is an expert in the area they need.

LawAdvisor also aims to improve the financial accessibility of legal services by giving the consumer greater choice. Lawyers can market themselves online and tender for client work. This places a significant degree of control into the hands of the customer, allowing them to select legal services that are appropriate and affordable.

With these features, LawAdvisor and other services like it are promoting the right to access justice and bringing the legal system within the reach of the people whose problems it is intended to solve.