Universalizing the acess to Justice

an extensionist project of popular legal advice and its impacts in the extreme south of the State of Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

Through our experience in the extension project “Assessoria jurídica online e gratuita em tempos de pandemia COVID-19” (Free online legal advice in times of the COVID-19 pandemic), developed in the scope of the Center for Practicing Law, at the Federal University of Southern Bahia, Brazil, we aim to describe what we experienced with the service to the public, both internal and external to UFSB, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to reflect on the state of access to justice in the extreme south of Bahia. Thus, we aim to demonstrate our motivations that inspired the creation of the project, as well as to present our methodology of self-organization and the actions carried out and the challenges we encountered. We highlight the relevance of this extension project, which lasted for more than a year and a half, though this experience report is only focused on the legal advice provided in 2020, which comprised six months, to understand the relations of inequalities, access to justice, political context and private law, especially in its critical aspects.