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Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations

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Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations

Scala Legal

lourim | Louvain-la-Neuve, Mons

Project duration: 2025 - 2028

Funder: Innoviris

Principal investigators: UCLouvain & ULB

Scala Legal is a research project dedicated to understanding, measuring, and scaling innovative approaches to access to justice, with a particular focus on integrated legal support for vulnerable populations.

Project description & objectives

Scala Legal is a three-year research project, coordinated by Casa Legal, a Brussels-based socio-legal organisation and pioneer in integrated legal aid. 

 

Born in 2018 from the collaboration of four lawyers, Casa Legal was built around a core observation: law alone is not enough. People in situations of crisis are often structurally unable to exercise their rights, partly because the legal aid system is too segmented and lacks a holistic approach. Casa Legal's response was a single entry point combining lawyers, social workers, psychologists, and mediators.

 

The project is structured around three complementary axes: 

  • Axis 1: conceptualising the impact of the innovation within the access-to-justice ecosystem
  • Axis 2: measuring that impact through causal analysis and cost-benefit evaluation
  • Axis 3: studying how the impact can be scaled to other contexts and territories

 

Funded by Innoviris under its Research & Development — Social Innovation programme, Scala Legal approaches Casa Legal not as a model to promote, but as a research object through which to understand what integrated legal aid produces in a complex social system.

Scala Legal brings together a multidisciplinary team from UCLouvain (LouRIM & CIRTES) and ULB (DULBEA, CEBRIG & CEESE), combining expertise in organisational management, social economy, applied economics, and sustainability transitions. The team works in close collaboration with Casa Legal.

 

From UCLouvain

  • Julie Solbreux (LouRIM)
  • Julie Hermans (LouRIM)
  • Coralie Helleputte (CIRTES)
  • Anaïs Périlleux (CIRTES)

 

From ULB

  • Françoise Delmez (DULBEA)
  • Magali Verdonck (DULBEA)
  • Solène Sureau (CEBRIG)
  • Marek Hudon (CEBRIG)

 

For Casa Legal

  • Margarita Hernandez-Dispaux
  • Katia Melis
  • Noémie Segers
  • Clémentine Ebert
  • And the team

Scala Legal adopts an interdisciplinary and participatory approach, combining qualitative, quantitative, and systemic methods across its three axes. 

 

Axis 1 draws on systemic thinking, inspired by Donella Meadows, to map the access-to-justice ecosystem with field actors, and mobilises narrative interviews and an adapted Business Model Canvas to trace Casa Legal's effects on its stakeholders. 

 

Axis 2 applies causal inference methods and a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, including indirect costs and distributional effects, with particular attention to mechanisms of non-take-up of rights.

 

Axis 3 combines case study analysis of comparable social innovations with a co-constructive approach, aiming to understand the conditions under which integrated legal aid can take root in different local contexts, rather than simply seeking to replicate an existing model.