Informal Access to Justice. Using the Example of Colombian Tramitadores for Conceptual Reflections on the Pathway Model

The relevance of the pathway or iceberg model for conceptualizing access to justice is undisputed, but it is also known that its context-sensitive consideration of other sociological contextual factors is problematic, and in particular that informality has so far been insufficiently considered. In order to better delineate this gap, this article presents the main findings of an ongoing socio-legal research project that empirically examines Colombian tramitadores. Tramitadores are informal actors of legal mobilization, known to millions of people from their everyday lives and now being studied in the context of access to justice and legal mobilization research. Tramitadores occupy an intermediate space between legal professionals and laypersons that has not been considered in access to justice research. Tramitadores are an exemplary case for research because they lend themselves to linking two complex areas of research: access to justice and informality research. Using interviews with tramitadores and visual data from their workplaces, this paper describes the relationship between these informal actors and access to justice in Colombia. On this basis, it offers a perspective on the need to revise the pathway and iceberg models by empirically justifying the role of informality and using this previously neglected category of analysis to emphasize the importance of the respective social contexts of access to justice.