How can we help students learn about people-centred justice so that they develop into (legal) professionals who deliver justice that works?
The added value of vocational (legal) education
Door: Dr. Barbara Warwas, Lector in Multilevel Regulation
The Hague University of Applied Sciences
In September 2024, a few professors of applied sciences in the Netherlands, together with partners and supporting organisations, launched a network under the theme “people-centred law and practice.” Our main goal is to develop a strategic, practice-oriented research agenda that translates recent (intern)national policy discussions on the developing paradigm of people-centred justice into the vocational (legal) educational context.[i] Notably, while the high-level discussions on people-centred justice are conducted within a robust international network, the vocational educational sector is not well-represented in the debates, at least here in the Netherlands. In this post, I argue that education—especially vocational legal education—is uniquely positioned to help advance many elements of people-centred justice through teaching and learning practices. Those practices can be systemized and innovated further with the help of practice-oriented research. Paraphrasing the expression used by one of the pioneers of people-centred justice—The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (Hiil): making justice work, I make a few suggestions on how we can help students learn about people-centred justice so that they develop into (legal) professionals who deliver justice that works.
What is people-centred justice?
First, hoping that a few students or people unfamiliar with people-centred justice read this contribution, I start by explaining what people-centred justice is. The concept of people-centred justice has been developed in response to the ongoing and alarming large-scale global justice gap. According to estimated figures, in 2019, two-thirds of the world’s population—that is, more than 5,1 billion people—were deprived of access to justice by being excluded from legal protection in terms of their legal identity, proof of housing or in their employment.[ii] Additionally, the legal and administrative justice needs of 1,5 billion people worldwide were unmet.[iii]
Building on the promise of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.3—“aiming to promote the rule of law at the national and international levels, and ensure equal access to justice for all”— The Hague Declaration on Equal Access to Justice for All by 2030 was adopted in 2019 at the Ministerial Rountable hosted by the then Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation of the Netherlands, Sigrid Kaag.[iv] The Declaration included the high-level commitment of political leaders to placing people and their needs at the core of justice systems through institutional and informal actions, including empowering people to co-develop laws that apply to them. In 2021, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) developed its Framework and Good Practice Principles for People-Centred Justice. Subsequently, in 2023, the OECD adopted the Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems, which reinforced and strengthened the four pillars of people-centred justice under the Good Practice Principles.
The scope and content of the concept of people-centred justice
I have used the words “concept” and “paradigm” when explaining the policy work on people-centred justice. Indeed, people-centred justice can be seen as a concept of justice that represents an entirely novel paradigm. To expand on this paradigm in more detail, I will focus on the four pillars of people-centred justice developed by the OECD and the “five main investments” of people-centred justice under HiiL’s Policy Brief “Delivering People-Centred Justice, Rigorously.”
The OECD’s four pillars of people-centred justice under the Good Principles of People-centred Justice concern the following: (1) designing and delivering people-centred services, (2) enabling governance and infrastructure, (3) empowerment of people, and (4) planning, monitoring and accountability. The OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems defines “people-centricity” as “a human-centred approach” across all levels of justice systems, including the “delivering, implementing and evaluating public policies, services and legal procedures.”[v] Importantly, people-centricity incorporates the perspectives of communities in need, such as “marginalised, underserved and groups in vulnerable situations (e.g. women, children, indigenous groups, elderly and people with disabilities).”[vi]
HiiL’s Policy Brief complements this approach by focusing on the five main investments of people-centered justice. These are: (1) data, (2) evidence-based practice, (3) game-changing justice services, (4) enabling environment, and (5) engagement and accountability.[vii] Specifically, HiiL recommends that reliable data be collected and shared openly, preferably by a knowledge institution, so that the demographics of justice problems can be mapped and updated regularly.[viii] Second, by the evidence-based practice HiiL means the practice of delivering justice that actually works for the people who experience injustice: the practice that is standardised, interdisciplinary, and based on the experiences of the professionals who deliver it.[ix] Third, justice needs to be delivered in a way that is effective. HiiL mentioned a few potential models according to which gamechanging justice services can be organized, namely: community justice that combines informal and formal practices, user-friendly contracts especially in the SMEs sector, one-stop shop tribunals for disputes such as neighborhood and family disputes, claiming platforms enabling the access to government platforms, prevention programs involving, for example, information sharing platforms, and finally online information and advice in order to empower people to address the problems on their own if they reoccur.[x] Notably, in order for any of the models to work, they need to be embedded in local practices and political landscape, for which HiiL, following the World Bank, recommends using the innovation labs.[xi] Fourth, justice innovation requires an enabling environment from the top (ministries, including the ministries of justice) to the bottom, where rules, regulations, and governance models allow and empower justice innovators.[xii] Lastly, a system of assessment and accountability needs to be developed so that the innovations are systematically reviewed, monitored and evaluated.[xiii] Without a doubt, achieving people-centred justice—be it locally or globally—is a highly complex task that needs both policy work and the actual work on the ground. Many practitioners and organisations, including HiiL, have already invested their efforts in making a step forward in both fields, and this work should be widely complemented.
One question comes to mind here: how do we learn about people-centred justice and the people-centred attitude necessary to deliver justice that works? Although there is a growing trend in the academy, especially in legal education and research, to address topics of people-centred justice, the systematic discussion about the learning (and teaching) practices in the field of people-centred justice is still missing from those debates.[xiv] By a “systematic discussion”, I mean a more horizontal (meaning across universities of applied sciences and beyond) and critical review of how law students and students from other relevant fields (e.g., social work) learn about law and addressing people’s needs in the course of their studies.
Below, I provide some preliminary observations on this topic from the perspective of practice-oriented research within vocational education in the Netherlands. I provide these observations in the context of the early work of the already-mentioned network of applied sciences professors in the Netherlands on people-centred law and practice. Here, I complement my observations with the discussions during the first conference of our network: “Navigating the Future of Law Together,” that took place at The Hague University of Applied Sciences on March 7, 2025. My argument is that—although the learning practices in people-centred justice should be universal and generally applicable across (educational) sectors—vocational (legal) education seems particularly suited to train students in the field of people-centred justice for a variety of reasons that I outline below. Moreover, the practice-oriented research within the vocational (legal) education could be a driving factor for the systematization and further innovation of teaching and learning practices relevant for realizing people-centred justice.
The added value of vocational education for people-centred justice
Let me start by stressing that the question of how to learn about people-centred justice in a systematic manner is quite challenging. It is so because it asks from us educators, researchers, and policymakers to delineate and systemise areas that escape any categorisations. For example, people-centredness deals with complex aspects of human nature on the delivering (student/professional) and receiving (client) ends, the learning of which requires a basic understanding of neuroscience and the recognition and acceptance of how entangled and—colloquially saying—complex our brain is when dealing with its cognitive and affective functions. Similarly, interpersonal skills that are crucial for learning about how to deliver people-centred justice, are best developed in practice, and there is only as much practice students can get during their studies. So, we deal with grey zones when it comes to learning about people-centred justice during legal education, and systematizing grey zones is difficult. Yet, I will argue that vocational (legal) education is more prone to address those grey zones in the field of people-centred justice more systematically from a methodological perspective than traditional legal education.
To address this further, I will use the three elements of legal education described by Eleine Mak when discussing the attitude of a resilient lawyer, that is: qualification, socialisation, and personal formation (subjectivisation).[xv] “Qualification” concerns the acquiring of the comprehensive knowledge and skills by law students through which they develop into “all round professionals,” also called T-shaped lawyers, having an in-depth legal knowledge and skills (the upright of T) as well as a professional attitude and broad knowledge of other potentially relevant disciplines (the beam of T).[xvi] “Socialization” means the embeddedness of law students in the culture of the legal profession shortly after they start their studies, for example, the immersion by students into the local legal jurisprudence or the legal jargon.[xvii] This essentially means learning “how to think like a lawyer.”[xviii] Finally, the personal formation concerns the moral and ethical dilemmas of law students also as future professionals.[xix] Here, the law students develop an understanding of their own values vis-à-vis the values of organisations they work within and society.
All three elements above are certainly present also in vocational legal education. Yet, because vocational legal education focuses on developing a legal professional rather than a qualified lawyer—a professional who will work on solving legal problems on the ground, often outside the formal justice sector—vocational legal education seems naturally disposed to incorporate methods and insights from other disciplines across all three elements of legal education described by Eleine Mak. Within the “qualification” element, this means the pedagogical focus within the vocational legal education on the development of an all-round legal professional with interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, also from non-legal disciplines, increasingly relevant for the quickly evolving profile of the legal professional, especially here in the Netherlands. This concerns the necessary knowledge and practical skills in new technologies and business operations, but also the familiarity with restorative and dispute resolution practices and the vast array of social skills, among the others. Foremostly, vocational legal education has lots of room to expand the learning practices and analytical frameworks beyond the purely legal profession within its “socialization” and “personal formation.” Specifically, I mean here the space to learn from the experiences of people whose needs are unmet, as well as the ability to incorporate the spectrum of experiences and values of professionals and organisations whose work precedes or is conducted in parallel to the formal judicial paths involving lawyers and courts (e.g., municipalities, legal aid organisations, or community organisations). This creates an advantage for vocational legal education in addressing the so-called justiciable events, broadly understood. The term justiciable event originates in the seminal research by Hazel Genn on Paths to Justice and concerns any everyday problems with a potential legal dimension, regardless of whether they reach the civil justice system or not.[xx] In other words, justiciable events concern the “little injustices” people face that fall outside the formal systems of justice or are ignored by this system.[xxi] And we know from the previous research that those little injustices concern circa 95% of all everyday problems, as only 5% of those problems will be resolved in courts.[xxii] Anecdotally, vocational legal education has the advantage of addressing the 95% of everyday legal problems of people, often including vulnerable groups.
Regarding vulnerability, the OECD’s definition of people-centredness recommends working on the justice needs of diverse and underrepresented groups. Yet legal education is often seen as lagging behind in terms of diversity and inclusion. This concerns both the findings from the sociological research that the legal profession—historically based on privilege, reinforces elitism and hierarchy to ensure its exclusivism and that socialization of law students is based on the rigid analytical frameworks of the legal doctrines themselves.
The latter point brings me back to the advantages of vocational legal education in learning about people-centred justice that works: vocational legal education has a broad capacity to incorporate experiences and frameworks from organisations across and outside the legal and judicial sector. This is why it should also be quite flexible regarding the inclusion of lived experiences of “communities in need”, especially marginalized, underserved, and vulnerable individuals and groups into the learning practices of people-centred justice.[xxiii]
I recommend that vocational legal education incorporates a systematic and holistic approach to learning about people-centred justice, including insights from inclusive and critical educational theories and pedagogies. There is a lot to choose from in this regard. For example, humanizing pedagogies offer culturally diverse learning and teaching practices whose goal is to achieve equity and social justice already at the educational level by incorporating the experiences from diverse cultural backgrounds and lived experiences of students and teachers themselves into learning and teaching practices. A practical example of this approach is the Comenius Leadership Project on Relational Peer Mediation that I have the pleasure to co-lead with my colleague Naomi van Stapele at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, that fosters relationality, collectivity, and intellectual and emotional flexibility of students based on the pedagogy of discomfort.[xxiv] It is crucial that pedagogical theories and practices are included already at the stage of the learning outcomes in the curriculum design itself. Here, the insights from practice-oriented research in those fields are essential. This is why in our network on people-centred justice, we work with a broad group of experts, including professors of citizenship and education, such as Laurence Guérin. In sum, the systematic input from the practice-oriented research, including the legal, pedagogical, and potentially other relevant fields, will allow us to expand the approach to learning about people-centred justice beyond more traditional “socio-legal” and “law in action” approaches, by adding the necessary component on how to learn about people-centred justice so that it works.
This brings me to the further role of practice-oriented research in vocational legal education about people-centred justice. I come back here to the so-called first investment on people-centred justice defined by HiiL, which is data. Specifically, HiiL suggested that data about people’s needs is stored, made available, and updated regularly, preferably in a central manner so that the data is not fragmented. This is another example where practice-oriented research has its unique advantages. Certainly, many research projects have already been conducted on the topic and there is already rich data to learn from. That said, because of the unique positioning of vocational education and practice-oriented research, which have a strong local dimension through the work of students, teachers, and researchers with communities in the neighbourhoods, applied sciences professors could help bring this local data to the fore of national and international debates and connect the latter with vocational legal education in a systematic manner. This could be done through the already available institutions such as the Dutch Centre of Expertise and Repository for Research Data (DANS) through the already existing research policies that require transparency and openness of data. Regardless of these policies, in my experience, a lot still needs to be done to train students in research methods to realise the importance of evidence-based teaching, learning, and research, and to publicize the data collected in the context of vocational legal education, also in the field of people-centred justice. The systematic input from applied sciences professors could include drafting student-friendly guidelines on the existing policy documents regarding research integrity and on how to connect practice-oriented research of students, teachers and researchers to the national repository of data in the context of education.
Moving further towards the advantages of vocational legal education in learning about people-centred justice, I will focus on delivering justice that works. HiiL proposed a few relevant models of the work on the ground—some of which being particularly suited for vocational education and research such as one-stop shop tribunals for neighborhood and family disputes, prevention programs like information sharing platforms, or online information and advice to empower people on the ground. Many of those activities can be seen in the work of legal clinics in the Netherlands (rechtswinkels) or through different practice-oriented research initiatives, especially focused on dispute prevention and resolution by students. My recommendation is to continue the work already initiated in some applied science universities including The Hague University on mediation trainings informed by practice-oriented, educational research, which should be upscaled through a systematic practice-oriented research agenda. This was also the recommendation during the first conference of our network on people-centred justice by one of our keynote speakers, Thomas John, among others. Notably, students at applied sciences universities already engage broadly in living labs, which are the recommended path for testing the international solutions for people-centred justice services more locally. Our students could indeed play an active role there.
Finally, I will point to the advantages of vocational legal education at the level of monitoring of people-centred justice solutions. During the first conference of our network on March 7th, a few speakers, including Professor Marc Hertogh and Jin Ho Verdonschot pointed to the role of applied sciences at the monitoring phase of people-centred justice. More specifically, Professor Hertogh noticed that—in view of all the data already collected—we should now turn towards the impact-centred justice. Students could help with the assessments and monitoring of how laws, rules, and infrastructure contribute to the concrete results of the rule of law. My recommendation would be to connect this aspect of people-centred justice with the one on the research-based trainings on informal dispute resolution and prevention means. This could help students (and universities of applied sciences) to develop dispute prevention and resolution training programs through which students could not only provide advice to people with justice needs but also monitor if the solutions they proposed were in fact implemented. If the implementation was not successful, students could help with such an implementation further. This and other recommendations will need to be further elaborated within the work of the network on people-centred law and practice. We hope to keep receiving feedback from everyone who wishes to support our work.
[i] By vocational education I mean here higher vocational education (hbo) that is provided by universities of applied sciences (hogescholen) in the Netherlands. Although in this post I focus mostly on legal education, I use the word “legal” in brackets as my observations are relevant also for other disciplines within the hbo sector, which is increasingly interdisciplinary. For more information on the professional profile of students enrolled in vocational legal education see: ‘Landelijk Beroeps- En Opleidingsprofiel HBO-Rechten 2025’, 2019, https://www.vereniginghogescholen.nl/system/profiles/documents/000/000/014/original/hbo_rechten.lbop.2019.pdf?1551956635.
[ii] World Justice Project, ‘Global Insights on Access to Justice: Findings from the World Justice Project General Population Poll in 101 Countries’, 2019, 4, https://worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/documents/WJP-A2J-2019.pdf; World Justice Project, ‘Measuring the Justice Gap: A People-Centered Assessment of Unmet Justice Needs Around the World’, 2019, 22, https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/research-and-data/measuring-justice-gap.
[iii] World Justice Project, ‘Measuring the Justice Gap: A People-Centered Assessment of Unmet Justice Needs Around the World’, 22.
[iv] ‘Declaration on Equal Access to Justice for All by 2030, 7 February 2019, The Hague.’
[v] OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems, paragraph I
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Sam Muller et al., ‘HiiL: Policy Brief. Delivering People-Centred Justice, Rigorously’, 2021, sec. 3, https://www.hiil.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/HiiL-Policy-Brief-PCJ-Programmes.pdf.
[viii] Muller et al., sec. 3.
[ix] Muller et al., sec. 3.
[x] Muller et al., 3.
[xi] Muller et al., sec. 3.
[xii] Muller et al., sec. 3.
[xiii] Muller et al., sec. 3.
[xiv] See, for examample, Special Issue, ‘Special Issue: Person-Centred Justice: Reimagining Law, Institutions, and Process / Numéro Spécial: Justice Centrée Sur La Personne : Réimaginer Le Droit, Les Institutions et Les Processus’, Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, no. Special Issue 3 (December 2024).
[xv] Elaine Mak, ‘Weerbaarheid En Juridisch Onderwijs’, Nederlands Juristenblad, no. 39 De weerbare democratische rechtsstaat (12 August 2023): 3408–10.
[xvi] Mak, 3408; Elaine Mak, The T-Shaped Lawyer and beyond. Rethinking Legal Professionalism and Legal Education for Contemporary Societies (Boom, 2017).
[xvii] Mak, ‘Weerbaarheid En Juridisch Onderwijs’, 3409.
[xviii] Nina Holvast and Willem-Jan Kortleven, ‘Towards Inclusive Legal Education: Complications and Challenges’, Erasmus Law Review 16, no. 4 (2023): 155, https://doi.org/10.5553/ELR.000271.
[xix] Mak, ‘Weerbaarheid En Juridisch Onderwijs’, 3409–10.
[xx] Hazel Genn, Paths to Justice: What People Do and Think about Going to Law (Hart Publishing, 1999).
[xxi] See the connections between justiciable events and "little injustices" by Laura Nader in: Ab Currie, ‘The Legal Problems of Everyday Life The Nature, Extent and Consequences of Justiciable Problems Experienced by Canadians’, Report prepared for the Department of Justice Canada, 2 (online version), accessed 16 May 2025, https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/rr07_la1-rr07_aj1/rr07_la1.pdf.
[xxii] Maurits Barendrecht, ‘Understanding Justice Needs: The Elephant in the Courtroom’ (HiiL, 2019), 9.
[xxiii] OECD, ‘Recommendation of the Council on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems’, 7 December 2023, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0498.
[xxiv] For more information about the project please see: Barbara Warwas and Naomi van Stapele, ‘Relational Peer Mediation Training to Foster Affective Learning at The Hague University of Applied Sciences through the Pedagogy of Discomfort’, Forthcoming in the Conference Proceedings: International Conference on Group Dispute Resolution” Held at the University of Bologna, 10-11 October 2024 and Hosted by the University Dispute Resolution PRIN Project, online version.
Dr. Barbara Warwas, Lector in Multilevel Regulation