Kaitlyn Blaser

Kaitlyn Blaser is a doctoral student at the Peter A. Allard School of Law investigating civil access to justice in British Columbia courts and tribunals. Her research engages the question of what an equitable approach to access to justice looks like in the context of social and institutional realities that often create wide disparities in bargaining power between parties in a legal dispute. Kaitlyn seeks to answer this question by taking a contextual, interdisciplinary and mixed methodology approach.

Beyond her doctoral research, Kaitlyn is a part-time practising lawyer in British Columbia focusing on civil litigation, everyday legal problems, and innovative approaches to service delivery. Through her practice, she recently began supporting Access Pro Bono’s innovative new Everyone Legal Clinic, which aims to fill unmet legal needs by training articling students to provide affordable legal services through a collaborative and virtual legal clinic model.

Supervisor: Margot Young

Professional Affiliations

Member, Law Society of British Columbia

Cumming, Kaitlyn. "No-Fault, Motor Vehicle Accidents, and the Civil Resolution Tribunal: Effective Justice Or False Prophet?" The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 40, (2024): 184-210.

Cumming, Kaitlyn. “The Chambers List Is Long Today and Every Day: A Qualitative Exploration of the Potentiality of Person-Centred Justice in Vancouver’s Supreme Court of British Columbia.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 39, no. 3 (2024): 536–58. 

Presentations

Opening the Gates of Social Closure: Strategies for Incorporating Participatory and Reflexive Research into the Study of Legal Contexts (May 2025)
People-Centred Justice Workshop (Vancouver, BC)
Access to Justice Centre for Excellence / University of British Columbia / Law Commission of Canada

Relational Inequality Theory & the Supreme Court of British Columbia (June 2023)
Law & Society Association Annual Meeting / Civil A2J Roundtable (San Juan, Puerto Rico)

Friends or Foes? Proportionality & Person-Centred Justice (May 2023)
CLSA Conference / Person-Centred Justice Workshop (York University, ON)
Canadian Law and Society Association

Access to Civil Justice, Dispute Resolution & Legal Change (November 2023)
Continuing Legal Education BC, Conflict Resolution 2023: Understanding Conflict Resolution Through Research Webinar (Online)

Equitable Access to Civil Justice: Towards Accountable and Responsive Justice (February 2023)
CLSA Midwinter Conference: Law and (in)justice in times of crisis (Wilfred Laurier University, ON)
Canadian Law and Society Association

The Civil Resolution Tribunal: Civil A2J and Mission Creep in an Era of Inequality (July 2022)
Global Meeting on Law and Society (Lisbon, Portugal)
Law and Society Association

The Civil Resolution Tribunal & Motor Vehicle Accidents: Effective Justice or False Prophet? (June 2022)
American Bar Foundation (ABF) Re-Imagining Justice Conference (Chicago, United States)

The Civil Resolution Tribunal: Mission Creep, Technology & Administrative Law (Virtual, July 2021)
The International Society of Public Law (ICON*S) Mundo Conference