Raising relational legal consciousness through co-production research? Making law more accessible

Abstract

This article offers co-production as a new methodology for relational approaches to legal consciousness studies that allows for deeper analysis of and engagement with the everyday experience of law. We argue that the inherent relationality of co-production has the potential to both expose and change legal consciousness. As an approach that equalizes status in the co-production of knowledge, social structures and hierarchies are reproduced in real time, allowing the relational networks through which legal consciousness is formed to emerge. We demonstrate both the possibility and the value of this approach through a discussion of early findings from a co-produced project focused on accessible legal information for disabled people with cognitive impairments. Our emerging data show that disabled people's experience as ‘outsiders’ in their communities, and the barriers to justice that they encounter through being not believed or information being given in inaccessible formats, creates uncertainty and distrust of the utility of legal professionals as routes for resolution – even as they express a desire for formal legal process. These data also show that engaging with co-production work can increase the legal confidence of people from marginalized groups.