And their applications outside of Family Law
The concept of “unbundled legal services,” also known as limited-scope representation, has seen significant success in Family Law in recent years. However, its advantages extend beyond Family Law, particularly when assisting clients before administrative tribunals. Tribunals like the Civil Resolution Tribunal, the Human Rights Tribunal, and the Residential Tenancy Branch are designed to help self-represented litigants resolve disputes without full legal representation. Although this design promotes empowerment, it also presents challenges that unbundled legal services can effectively address.
Administrative tribunals by their very nature aim to provide accessible, fair, and efficient dispute resolution to lay litigants. For example, the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act 1 mandates in section 20 that “parties are to represent themselves in a tribunal proceeding.” This rule underscores the principle of self-representation, yet oftentimes practical challenges also arise.
Navigating procedural intricacies, understanding legal principles, and presenting a case can be overwhelming for laypersons and these difficulties are particularly evident when a party receives an unfavorable decision (at the tribunal level) and seeks judicial review. At this stage, many self-represented litigants approach lawyers for assistance, often too late to correct any procedural missteps or to present new and crucial evidence. This highlights the need for early legal support that unbundled legal services can provide.
Unbundled Legal Services: A Practical Solution
By offering discrete legal services, lawyers can assist clients with specific aspects of their cases, without the costs associated with full representation. This model puts the client in the proverbial driver’s seat, while also being more cost-effective for those clients (in most cases). It allows lawyers to provide targeted legal assistance such as preparing documents or offering strategic advice based on a client’s needs, thereby enhancing a litigant’s ability to navigate the tribunal system effectively on their own.
Unbundled legal services can take various forms. For instance, lawyers may offer hourly consultations where clients can book a set number of hours at a fixed rate to draft a legal memorandum on their specific issue. Alternatively, fixed fees can be charged for stages in a claim, such as preparing written application materials or organizing evidence for a trier of fact. As one client described it, unbundled legal services are akin to a restaurant menu, allowing them to select the services they require without unnecessary extras.
Another benefit of providing unbundled services is that it serves as a probation period for clients, where they get to assess their lawyer’s work while retaining the ability to end the relationship for any reason. In the writer’s experience, many unbundled retainers lead to a full representation once the clients understand the process of taking a claim to a hearing.
Lawyers need to be mindful, however, that providing unbundled legal services also comes with risks, such as the scope of work ballooning beyond what was initially agreed upon. As with any client file, it is imperative that lawyers expressly set out the scope of their assistance early in the form of a retainer agreement, which provides for a mechanism to amend the scope of work on an ongoing basis. While this may take a bit more time to customize each retainer agreement to a client’s needs, the exercise of specifying the tasks that you agree to perform for a client oftentimes sets the necessary boundaries to avoid many of the pitfalls for providing unbundled services.
Encouraging Lawyers to Explore Unbundled Legal Services
The benefits of unbundled legal services are clear, and there is a growing demand for such services beyond the family law setting. Lawyers are encouraged to explore this opportunity to enhance access to justice and to expand their practice. By offering unbundled services, lawyers can make a meaningful impact and provide valuable support to self-represented litigants.
In conclusion, unbundled legal services are a practical and effective way to assist clients in administrative tribunals. They offer cost-effective, targeted assistance that empowers self-represented litigants and prevents procedural errors. As the legal landscape evolves, unbundled services will play an increasingly important role in ensuring all individuals have access to the legal support they need.
Written by Arash Ehteshami, member of CBABC’s Unbundled Legal Services Section Executive.
- ([SBC 2012] CHAPTER 25). | ↩