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The costs and long duration of court proceedings can be discouraging, and for the poor and micro and small enterprises (MSMEs) it can preclude access to justice entirely. According to the latest CEPEJ data, in 2014 disposition time of first instance civil and commercial litigious cases ranged from 97 days in Lithuania to 532 in Italy, with an overall EU average of 250 days.2 Costs (comprising both lawyer and court fees) can sometimes be greater than the value of the claim. Legislators around the world have long recognized that disputes concerning smaller claims may not require the same complex procedures and rules; instead, they can be resolved in a cheaper and more efficient manner. Although small claims procedure is not a new phenomenon and has existed for decades, it has only recently gained traction. Factors such as popular demand spur more and more countries into looking for new and faster ways to deal with smaller claims, as citizens are looking for simpler, ICT-enabled ways to resolve smaller disputes. This report provides a comparative analysis of small claims procedure in the 28 EU Member States, including lessons learned and good practices, to inform EU members and candidate countries looking to introduce or reform their small claims procedure. It considers a number of dimensions, namely: court fees, thresholds, institutional set-up, use of technology, the role of lawyers, lawyer fees, and avenues of appeal.

Law and Development --- Law and Justice Institutions --- Legal Products --- Legal Reform --- Settlement of Investment Disputes

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Collective action by women's networks has been a strong driver of legislative change in many countries across the world. Women's groups in Botswana have used advocacy tools such as testing the implementation of gender equality principles in the national court system. In 1992, women's legal networks in the Unity Dow case successfully challenged discriminatory statutory citizenship laws. This victory triggered far-reaching reforms of the citizenship law, family law, and even the Constitution itself. Two decades later, another successful "test" case, the Mmusi case, has challenged the customary law practice of favoring male heirs as contrary to constitutional principles of equality. The paper explores the role that judges and national courts play in implementing gender equality principles and upholding state commitments to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The paper also highlights the role of governments in taking on the concerns of their citizens and cementing the principle of equality in national legal frameworks. The backdrop to this process is a plural legal system where both customary and statutory laws and courts exist side by side. How women negotiate their rights through these multiple systems by coalition building and using "good practice" examples from other countries is important to understand from a policy perspective and how this "bottom-up" approach can contribute to women's economic empowerment in other national contexts.

CEDAW --- Children and Youth --- Development --- Economic Empowerment --- Gender --- Gender and Development --- Gender and Law --- Law --- Legal Products --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Population Policies --- Poverty Reduction --- Property Rights

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The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a labor court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.

Adjudication --- Assets --- Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress --- Confidence --- Corruption --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Information Security and Privacy --- Judicial process --- Judicial system --- Law and Development --- Lawyer --- Lawyers --- Legal framework --- Legal Products --- Microfinance --- Public Sector Corruption and Anticorruption Measures --- Trial

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The institutional landscape of local dispute resolution in Bangladesh is rich: it includes the traditional process of shalish, longstanding and impressive civil society efforts to improve on shalish, and a somewhat less-explored provision for gram adalat or village courts. Based on a nationally representative survey, qualitative evidence from focus groups, and a telephone survey of 40 Union Parishad chairpersons (a little less than 1 percent of the total Union Parishads), it provides both an empirical mapping of local conflict and justice and pointers to possible policy reforms. It suggests a number of opportunities for strengthening local justice and argues that the village courts may pose a useful bridge between Bangladesh's informal and formal justice institutions.

Gender and Law --- Judicial System Reform --- Justice --- Law and Development --- Legal Institutions of the Market Economy --- Legal Products --- Local conflict --- Local dispute resolution --- Policy reforms --- Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures --- Qualitative evidence

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The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a labor court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.

Adjudication --- Assets --- Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress --- Confidence --- Corruption --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Information Security and Privacy --- Judicial process --- Judicial system --- Law and Development --- Lawyer --- Lawyers --- Legal framework --- Legal Products --- Microfinance --- Public Sector Corruption and Anticorruption Measures --- Trial