Join a national network of librarians and legal community staff to help increase access to justice

• Posted on October 9, 2020
• by Fiona Chiu
• in Blog, VALL Blog & Announcements
• Comments Off on Join a national network of librarians and legal community staff to help increase access to justice

An invitation from Megan Smiley, LawMatters Coordinator with Courthouse Libraries BC:

As a past VALL member, I’d like to invite you to join a national network of librarians and justice sector folks working to increase Access to Justice: the Trusted Intermediaries Legal Information Network.

The TI-LI Network  is an innovative collaboration of legal information providers that seek to improve access to affordable and understandable legal information through trusted intermediaries for all Canadians. The network was launched in 2019 when the Saskatchewan Access to Legal Information Project (SALI) joined forces with CLBC’s LawMatters Program and the National Self Represented Litigants Project’s (NSRLP) Family Law in the Library Project. Since then, our network has grown to more than 80 contributors across Canada. We meet on a monthly basis and connect weekly through an online Basecamp page – our next meeting will be held October 27^th from 11:00 – 12:00 (Vancouver time).

The organizers recognize that user-centred design, interdisciplinary approaches, and networks are needed to address urgent, complex access to justice problems, especially during these uncertain times. The TI-LI Network thus connects legal information providers from across Canada to exchange information and maximize efficiency by encouraging collaboration and adapting of resources and materials related to legal information provision by trusted intermediaries.

The justice landscape is changing in response to the current crisis with COVID-19 and TI-LI Network member organizations are creating new responses that are shared with trusted intermediaries to address current needs that have arose as a result of COVID-19.

The work of the TI-LI Network is promoted by the National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters (AC), most recently featuring the work of the TI-LI Network as one of three key topic areas of the 2020 AC Community of Practice Series.

If you’re interested, please let me know! Reach me at msmiley@courthouselibrary.ca and we’ll get you added to the basecamp site. Looking forward to seeing more BC representation!