Law Commission Forum
URL
CASE STUDY OWNER
The Law Commission
LESSONS LEARNT
Strengths
- The forum encouraged participation of lay public;
- The Commission approached the exercise with a genuine openness to suggestions;
- The Commission provided a criteria framework to guide submission content and structure;
- The case study team generated support for public engagement (and the online forum) throughout the Commission;
- The Communications division developed a promotional strategy and implemented it;
- The forum and Tenth Programme were positioned within the context of previous Programmes and engagement activity;
- The case study team undertook their own research into online engagement theory and techniques and attended seminars and workshops to supplement those offered by the Digital Dialogues initiative.
Potential for improvement
- The forum had a low registration and participation rate;
- The extent of engagement of expert stakeholders with the forum was limited;
- The participation on the part of Commissioners was too infrequent and lacked depth;
- Partnerships with media organisations, and taking advantage of media coverage that generated public interest, could have improved the visibility of the Programme and encouraged participation in the forum.
OVERVIEW
The Law Commission was established to keep the law of England and Wales under review with a view to its systematic development and reform. Its stated aim is to achieve more accessible, intelligible and modern law.
POLICY PURPOSE
The Law Commission was established in 1965 and is required from time to time to submit programmes of law reform to the Lord Chancellor. There have been nine programmes of law reform to date.
The Tenth Programme of Law Reform was opened on February 5, 2007. In formulating this Programme, the Commission wanted to identify projects that would benefit the public.
Anyone can suggest to the Commission an area of the law that is in need of reform. The Law Commission tends to consider reform of particular branches of the law, but will consider any proposal within a set of basic criteria. The online forum was established to give key stakeholders and the public an opportunity to propose and discuss reforms of existing law in a structured manner.
The forum began with an open space for initial suggestions. Once several discrete areas of law had been identified by contributors, separate topics were established to allow deliberation on each: these included:
- Family law;
- Public law;
- Property law;
- Employment law;
- Commercial law;
- Criminal Law.
The reform programme impacts on residents of England and Wales.
MODEL
Online deliberative forum.
The forum was readable by anyone, but registration was required to contribute.
The forum was pre-moderated by Law Commission policy staff.
Representatives from the Commission logged into the forum to promote deliberation, respond to queries and to summarise discussions.
DURATION
February 5 to March 30, 2007
PUBLICITY
The forum was advertised on the Law Commission’s corporate website.
The Law Commission also promoted the forum through other local and national government bodies, networks and departments. Unions and representative groups were also told about the forum’s existence, as were interested stakeholders, identified by the Law Commission’s communications team.
Academic and legal bodies were informed of the forum’s existence, and a link to it was distributed within a loosely-defined eDemocracy community.
Press releases were also sent out by the Commission to trade and mainstream media.
There was no paid-for marketing.
OTHER METHODS
Individuals or organisations could make suggestions for incorporation in the Programme by email or by sending in a written response by post.
USER PROFILES
77 registrants: 64% male, 36% female.
The majority (96%) of registrants claimed to have regular access to the internet – a significant proportion did so from home:
A small majority of participants (51%) said they had participated in online consultations or forums previously, but these were not related to government policy exercises.
For 65% of the forum’s registrants, this was the first time they had participated in a government consultation exercise. Ten per cent of the registrants said that they had given evidence to a parliamentary inquiry previously.
Eighty-four per cent of the site’s registrants said that this was the first time that they had ever been involved in a Law Commission consultation. However, 25% said that they had been in contact with the Law Commission previously.
Political efficacy of respondents to our pre-consultation survey (n=17) was generally low. The majority (65%) felt that they would not be listened to by those in power, although 59% believed that their participation (in a general sense) could have some influence over the policy making process.
USAGE TRENDS
47 comments were posted – 43 by participants, two from the review team and two were posted by ‘Opinion Leaders’ (identifiable subject experts) recruited by the Commission.
The majority of contributions were made in the first month of the forum. The number of registrations and contributions tailed off in the forum’s second month, as did the number of posts:
USER FEEDBACK
Nine respondents completed our post-activity evaluation survey. Responses are illustrated as percentages below:
Despite some uncertainty about the value of online consultations (around a third expressed some ambivalence toward them in the evaluation survey), all respondents said that they would use similar opportunities in the future, and that they would recommend participation to others.
Participants had registered with the forum with a view to influencing policy and engaging with representatives of the Law Commission. Respondents noted that the majority of the posts involved peer-to-peer interaction and said that there were insufficient contributions from Commission staff. As a result, they claimed that the forum did not significantly enhance public understanding of the Law Commission.
DETAILED FEEDBACK
This online forum had great potential. It invited potential participants – lay and expert – to log-in to make suggestions for law reform and get involved in discussions about their own ideas and those of others. At the close of the consultation period, the Commission would draw together the submissions – received on- and offline – and base its recommendations on this input.
The consultation team consisted of communications professionals and policy leads. Both collaborated well and developed a ground-swell of support within the Commission for this activity. The team carried out preparatory research into online engagement to inform themselves about its benefits and shortfalls. A promotional strategy was devised and implemented in advance of the forum’s launch to attract participation from a range of users.
In the event, registrations were low and the forum received few submissions. Despite its openness and potential, the Programme and the forum did not capture the public’s attention and attract their participation. The secondary value of this forum to the Commission – which was to promote awareness of its role – was also not as effective as hoped.
Feedback about the forum from users was very limited. Some, while interested in an online submission route, were less keen to have their ideas deliberated over and thought that online submissions were at risk of being regarded by the Law Commission as less important than offline contributions.
Respondents suggested that the lack of real interaction with the policy team also deterred participation. The extent of the team’s involvement was limited because at this stage the Commission was inviting submissions rather than enabling discussion of their decisions on which areas of law were open to reform. However, there was scope for more facilitation of the discussion by the team – especially because of the low participation rate.
Finally, although it is true that the Commission devised a promotional strategy and implemented it, more could have been done to capitalise on media debate and appeal to single-issue communities. The Commission chose not to go with a ‘responsive’ approach to prevent the discussion being ‘hijacked’ by interest groups, and to try to ensure a high-level of submission quality. However, their use of moderation and a submission criteria framework would have helped to guard against such eventualities. A mainstream media partner may also have helped open this opportunity out to a greater number and range of the public than was ultimately achieved (particularly as at the time a number of national newspapers and broadcasters covered activity directly and indirectly related to law making and reform).
FOLLOW UP
The Tenth Programme of Law Reform is due to commence in April 2008.
The Law Commission intends to continue exploring the use of targeted forms of online engagement methods for future consultations.
