Our Challenges

The inefficient administration of justice resulting, for example, in a backlog of cases and an increasing number of people held in detention awaiting trial
Lack of access to justice and dispute settlement mechanisms
Terrorism - to modernise and keep a step ahead of tactics terrorists use
Drafting of laws - there is a persistent shortage of trained legislative drafters in developing Commonwealth countries
The lack of access to and dissemination of laws
The lack of free access to legal information and materials
Developing a holistic solution to combat counterfeiting and piracy

How we meet these challenges:

Our unique and uniting factor in the Commonwealth is our common legal heritage. Laws and legal terms are written in English, which places us in a strong position to help countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and the Pacific.

We support the digitisation of legal resources to benefit small jurisdictions. This is cost effective and helps member countries share legal information.
We provide training seminars on legislative drafting to help address the serious shortage of lawyers with the ability to draft laws.
We draft and circulate model legislation to guide member countries to translate their international legal obligations into domestic legislation. We have drafted model legislation on whistleblowing as part of an anti-corruption programme.
We disseminate legal information in three ways, through:

our website which has Commonwealth Secretariat Reports and other legal information.
the Commonwealth Law Bulletin (CLB), which is circulated to Ministries of Justice, Courts of Law, Law Reform Agencies, Parliaments, Bar Associations and Universities across the Commonwealth.
the Legal Dissemination Series, which serves as a forum for experts to identify emerging issues and to make recommendations on best practices and lessons learnt.