2 LAW REFORM AND ACCESSIBILITY¹ 1. Introduction The  title  of  this  paper  is  ‘law  reform  and  accessibility’.    There  are  two  concepts embedded in this title: first, the reform of the law to increase access to law and justice, and second, public influence on the process of law reform itself.  In relation to the law, accessibility means both the ability to know what the law is and to make use of it; in relation to law reform, this means not only knowing what law reform is under consideration,  but  being  involved  in  that  process  of  law  reform  itself.    In  practice, while  these  two  aspects  of  accessibility  are  quite  different,  they  are  nevertheless complementary  –  increasing  one  is  likely  to  increase  the  other.    It  is  this  second meaning of ‘accessibility’ that I want to focus on in this paper. We live in an information rich age but information does not necessarily translate into engagement or a sense of civic involvement so necessary to deliberative democracy in which  people  feel  able  to  involve  themselves  with  law,  justice  or  the  law  reform process.    This  sense  of  alienation  from  the  processes  of  the  law  is  reflected  in  the popular   media   with   their   concentration   on   sensationalised   reporting   of   little- understood  court  processes,  but  it  would  be  wrong  to  think  that  this  is  merely misunderstanding or easy popularism at work.  The inaccessibility of legal processes has been a staple of both fiction and non-fiction throughout the modern era.  A few examples will suffice. Franz Kafka uses the image of doorways to symbolise the law’s inaccessibility and incomprehensibility to the protagonist in his novel The Trial.²  There is a doorway to the law – and the law shines out radiantly from behind that doorway.  The doorway is always  open  but  there  is  a  guard  before  the  doorway  who  will  not  admit  the  man seeking entrance.  The guard does not use force and does not try to stand in the man’s way; he simply tells the man that he cannot grant him admission to the Law.  The man                                                 1 The author acknowledges the extensive assistance rendered by her Associate, Oanh Thi Tran, and Claire Riethmuller of the Queensland Law Reform Commission in the preparation of this paper. 2   Kafka, Franz (Scott, Douglas and Waller, Chris Trans) The Trial London, Picador Classics: 1977 (reprint) at 239 – 246.