Impact Awards—
2024 Partnership Award winner: Pierre Noreau

A forerunner in the field of law, especially access to justice, Pierre Noreau is a full professor with the Université de Montréal law faculty, and a researcher at the Centre de recherche en droit public.

Having always been drawn to social engagement, action and change, Noreau first began studying law as a personal challenge. Over the course of his academic career, he quickly realized how much the law can impact daily life, and how it can be used as a tool for social change, especially when paired with research. This was the driving force behind his decision to combine his interests in research, law and justice to transform society into a more cooperative space where everyone can thrive.

In 2015, Noreau put together ADAJ, the Accessing Law and Justice partnership, a project that has made outstanding contributions to advancing understanding of law and justice, developing the next generation of legal professionals, and advancing collaborative research throughout Quebec and Canada. The partnership brings together over 60 researchers from 10 universities with 70 partners from community, institutional, academic and professional sectors.

“It doesn’t make much sense to try and go it alone these days,” says Noreau. “Collective work is where all the new insights are coming from. This SSHRC Partnership Award doesn’t just recognize the work I have done so far, but the work of everyone who has participated in my projects.”

The ADAJ partnership was created to help researchers come up with solutions to issues stemming from people’s complex relationships with the legal field, which exist despite the promise of equality inherent in the democratic ideal, and the principles underlying the rule of law. These issues include barriers to legal access (i.e., the fact that few if any legal texts are understandable to non-experts) and difficulty in finding representation for in court. The partnership was organized around 27 research projects, each focused on a distinct theme intended to connect research and actual legal practice.

Through the partnership, Noreau demonstrated that access to justice doesn’t only mean the ability to access a judge or court, but encompasses many elements, such as the need to educate legal services on their role to support the public; for legal studies to take a more interdisciplinary approach; and for legal practices to diversify by increasing the use of civil mediation restorative justice, and recognized Indigenous community governance on matters of youth justice. The ultimate goal is to broaden understanding of the justice system and change institutional practices.

“My work on family mediation showed how much we need to further develop civil mediation practices, for instance,” says Noreau. “Today, a good number of legal disputes stemming from the end of a relationship are settled through family mediation, and that changes how lawyers practice and how couples deal with separation.”

Noreau has promoted interdisciplinary research by encouraging legal scholars to work with research teams in other disciplines like sociology, political science, criminology, social work and education sciences. His partnership approach has led to a change in research perspectives in the academic and legal community, and has had a major social impact on Quebec. For example, it has been used to develop support services for people who represent themselves in court, and in establishing the institutional legal framework enabling the Indigenous Innu people of Uashat Mak Mani-utenam to structure their efforts to protect youth.

The ADAJ partnership has also received international renown, particularly in France, where advances in Quebec have influenced several major reforms in legal practice.