Researching and evaluating public legal education: principles and practice

'Researching and evaluating public legal education: principles and practice' was launched by Plenet at the first UK PLE conference, held in London in February 2009.

Read the paper: Researching and evaluating PLE (191 KB)

The paper is divided into two parts.

Part One, 'Evaluation public legal education' looks at the key role of PLE in empowering the public and improving legal capability. It looks at the evaluation of social actions, the shaping PLE project evaluation and makes some suggestions for how to proceed.

Part Two provides a practical framework for evaluating public legal education projects. 'A guide to PLE evaluation - key issues' provides a guide to the benefits of PLE evaluation, the specific character of PLE and the development needs of PLE. The second section includes 'Designing a PLE evaluation' which outlines the steps needed to design an evaluation. Appendices include examples of evaluation tools.

Successful PLE

will demonstrate its value as a tool for improving people’s lives in many different ways
opens the way to engage effectively with new or different audience/users/groups/communities
can improve user/group/community experience of making good use of their legal capabilities, and so enable them to do more in more ways.

Plenet hope to develop over time and in collaboration with PLE projects, specific tools for PLE evaluation suitable for as full a range as possible of PLE projects.