2.1 The dispute pyramid

The first approach that we build upon is that of the ‘dispute pyramid’, which describes the emergence and the transformation of disputes as a step-by-step process (Felstiner et al., Reference Felstiner, Abel and Sarat1981). There are significant filters for legal action, because a disagreement can only become a legal case brought before a court if the person who experienced an offence has named, blamed and claimed in order to pursue their rights or to redress a rights violation. Miller and Sarat (Reference Miller and Sarat1981) made two major observations about dispute pyramids. First, the propensity to take a dispute to court depends more on the type of dispute than on the characteristics of the individual involved in the dispute, such as their race, income or level of education. Second, the most selective stage (in the sense that most potential cases are ‘filtered’ out) varies from one type of conflict to another: in some cases, the decision to contact (or not) a legal professional is the most selective stage, while for other types of dispute, the decision to turn to the courts is more selective.

Various studies have explored how the social characteristic of those involved in the conflicts influence legal mobilisation. They have shown that some specific groups have a lower ability to assert their rights, such as those who experience discrimination (Bumiller, Reference Bumiller1987; Clermont and Schwab, Reference Clermont and Schwab2004), women in situations of sexual harassment (Marshall, Reference Marshall2005) or people with disabilities (Engel and Munger, Reference Engel and Munger2003; Lejeune and Ringelheim, Reference Lejeune and Ringelheim2019). Later, Nielsen (Reference Nielsen2000) and Morrill, Edelman, Tyson and Arum (Reference Morrill2010) showed that people react differently to an offence depending on their race or gender. Most of these works have criticised the pyramid model because they consider it to be too simple and too linear. Recently, the metaphor of the dispute tree (Albiston et al., Reference Albiston, Edelman and Milligan2014) has been developed in order to highlight the various branches or paths that a conflict can follow, some of them through legal means and others through non-legal means, with a focus on grievances that can be resolved through alternative dispute resolution. Although the dispute pyramid has been largely criticised, we consider this model to be useful for exploring inequalities in the process of legal mobilisation because it allows us to explore how legal intermediaries reduce or increase inequalities among plaintiffs at each stage of this process and thus to explore unequal access to the civil legal system. However, we also take into account some criticisms addressed to this pyramid model and include a dimension that still needs to be better documented: plaintiffs’ unequal satisfaction with the legal decision or the out-of-court solution.

Concerning the role of legal intermediaries, it seems useful to recall that socio-legal scholars have created this concept of ‘legal intermediaries’ to designate actors – lawyers or non-legal professionals – who assist ordinary people in transforming their grievance into an appeal to the courts (Sarat and Felstiner, Reference Sarat and Felstiner1989; Kritzer, Reference Kritzer1990; Spire and Weidenfeld, Reference Spire and Weidenfeld2011; Lejeune and Orianne, Reference Lejeune and Orianne2014; Billows et al., Reference Billows, Buchter, Pélisse and Sarat2019; Pélisse, Reference Pélisse2019; Talesh and Pélisse, Reference Talesh and Pélisse2019). A new field of research has emerged that studies the wide range of people who, although they are not legal professionals, perform the function, roles and activities of legal intermediaries – for example, insurers (Talesh, Reference Talesh2015), safety engineers in research laboratories (Pélisse, Reference Pélisse2017) or union delegates (Guillaume, Reference Guillaume2018b). Our theoretical approach draws on this literature, but it differs from previous works in two ways. First, we examine whether there are differences between litigants who contact a legal professional, such as a lawyer, conciliation officer or notary, and those who contact a non-legal professional, such as a trade unionist, labour inspector, unpaid non-governmental organisation activist or street-level bureaucrat. This is particularly relevant in France, where a wide variety of legal intermediaries assist ordinary people involved in conflicts. In the case of divorces, Biland (Reference Biland2019) studied three types of separations that are anchored in class and gender patterns: the use of legal-aid lawyers and limited adjudication for working-class couples; family mediation and out-of-court settlements for middle-class ones; and the use of private lawyers and other legal professionals to help upper-class couples to go to court. Second, instead of aiming to understand how legal intermediaries shape the interpretation of the law, our goal is to explore whether and how their intervention produces inequalities among plaintiffs.

Concerning unequal satisfaction with the legal decision or out-of-court solution, we argue that socio-legal research has overlooked the likelihood of obtaining satisfaction with the outcome, whether inside or outside the courtroom. We consider the pyramid model to be useful for exploring how each stage of the disputes is likely to influence the plaintiffs’ satisfaction with the outcome. As demonstrated by Albiston, satisfaction with a legal decision is only partially related to the content of the concerned decision. Some litigants win their case, from their lawyers’ point of view, but lose it from their own perspective (Albiston, Reference Albiston1999).

2.2 Unequal access to civil justice

Socio-legal studies have shown that there are very significant inequalities in access to justice based on race, gender and social class (Sandefur, Reference Sandefur2008). Various phenomena contribute to reproducing and reinforcing inequalities in access to the civil judicial system. We will focus on three of them that are particularly relevant for our study. The first dimension is the unequal supply of legal services and legal professionals. In the 1960s, socio-legal scholars explored what they called the ‘unmet legal needs of the poor’ (Curran, Reference Curran1977, p. 848), arguing that legal professionals were less likely to view poor people's problems as legal issues (Carlin et al., Reference Carlin, Howard and Messinger1966). The second dimension is unequal access to legal services and the legal system from the plaintiffs’ perspective. Although class patterns have long been considered the main barrier to access to legal services and professionals, other factors might play a more significant role, such as gender (Collectif Onze, 2013), unequal evaluation of the cost of a lawyer (Kritzer, Reference Kritzer2008) and legal consciousness in organisational and institutional contexts (Merry, Reference Merry1990; Marshall and Barclay, Reference Marshall and Barclay2003). The third dimension is the differentiated subjective evaluation of plaintiffs’ experience with the legal system. Tyler (Reference Tyler1988) observed that satisfaction with the legal process varies according to the degree of acceptance of decisions and the degree of trust in the legal system. Other studies have criticised this approach, arguing that people evaluate the fairness of legal procedures differently depending on their social status, race, gender or legal training (O'Barr and Conley, Reference O'Barr and Conley1988; Greene, Reference Greene2016).

Two main criticisms can be addressed to these works. First, this literature has mostly focused on one particular group, but it has paid less attention to comparing differences in the conditions and opportunities of access between different groups (Sandefur, Reference Sandefur2008). Second, it has focused on instances when people have already made the decision to take their case to court and has not paid enough attention to the process that leads some people to go to court and others not to. Since the 1990s, scholars have attempted to address this question by examining how some ordinary situations are transformed, or not, into legal action (Genn, Reference Genn1999; Pleasence et al., Reference Pleasence2006; Reference Pleasence, Balmer and Sandefur2016). Our approach takes into account the criticisms addressed to research on unequal access to civil justice (Albiston et al., Reference Albiston, Edelman and Milligan2014): rather than focusing on civil legal categories, we consider all situations that lay people perceive as conflicts, whether these conflicts involve or do not involve civil legal issues (Ewick and Selbey, Reference Ewick and Silbey1998).Footnote ¹

2.3 Under which conditions does the contact with legal intermediaries reduce or increase inequalities among plaintiffs at each stage of the dispute?

Our research project relies on two main hypotheses. First, we explore each stage of the construction of the dispute process, in order to determine whether and to what extent we observe inequalities among respondents. Throughout the process of mobilisation of the law, do individuals differ in their perception of situations as conflicts, in their mobilisation of legal intermediaries and in their access to the legal system?

Second, we explore under which conditions the contact with legal intermediaries reduces or increases inequalities among plaintiffs at each stage of the dispute pyramid, including the likelihood of eventually being satisfied with the outcome of the conflict – a stage that the literature on the dispute process has not taken into account. We aim to compare the differences between respondents who had been in contact with a legal professional, those who had been advised by a non-legal professional and those who did not contact anyone to help resolve their problem.

3.1 Presentation of the survey

Our study is based on an original quantitative survey ‘Practices and Representations Toward the State’, which is part of the ELIPSS (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences) panel representative of the population living in France. Panel members were randomly selected by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and provided with a touchscreen tablet and a mobile Internet subscription so that they could participate in a survey each month. The survey was administered in January 2017 to a sample of 2,970 respondents, representative of the population living in mainland France and aged between eighteen and seventy-five years. Unlike Internet opinion polls, ELIPSS includes people who do not have Internet access and guarantees a much higher response rate because the panellists risk losing the tablet and Internet subscription if they do not respond. With a response rate of around 90 per cent, our survey includes 2,631 respondents. By including all those who have experienced a conflict and those who have not experienced one, this method allowed us to highlight the likelihood of going to court depending on the type of conflict and the social characteristics of the people concerned.

Following the method used in previous research (Genn, Reference Genn1999; Miller and Sarat, Reference Miller and Sarat1981; Pleasence et al., Reference Pleasence2006), we asked the respondents whether they had previously experienced different types of conflict in their life,Footnote ² how they resolved each of them and whether they were satisfied with the outcome of the conflict.

3.2 Selection of three types of conflict

The survey addressed six types of experiences of conflict that are commonly reported in France: with family members (concerning childcare, inheritance, etc.); with employers or colleagues; with one's tenant or landlord; with a public service or an administration; with a neighbour; and with a private company supplying goods and services (phone operator, bank, etc.). All of these conflicts can be taken to court or resolved outside the courtroom.

Among the six types of conflict, we focused on the three most frequently reported conflicts (Figure 1). Thirty-eight per cent of respondents had previously had a conflict with an employer or a colleague; 31 per cent with a private company supplying goods and services; and 30 per cent with a neighbour. Respondents who had experienced these conflicts reported that they turned to the courts in 13 per cent of cases of a conflict with an employer or colleague; in 6 per cent of cases of a conflict with a private company supplying goods and services; and in 4 per cent of cases of a conflict with a neighbour. We excluded conflicts with a family member, which lead to legal action in a high percentage of cases but are less frequent among the whole population (10 per cent).

Figure 1.

Conflict frequency and lawsuit frequency. Population: respondents who answered the questions about conflicts (N = 2,631). Note: 30 per cent of respondents had a conflict with a neighbour and, among them, 4 per cent brought the conflict to court. Source: PREFACE survey, ‘Pratiques et représentations face à l’État’, January 2017 (ELIPSS/CDSP).

The three types of conflict that we investigated are very different. On the one hand, conflicts with an employer or with a private company involve an asymmetrical relationship between the parties and have historically been constructed as political causes in France, where various social movements have promoted the rights of consumers in the face of large private companies (Pinto, Reference Pinto1989) and the rights of workers in the face of their employers (Willemez, Reference Willemez, Sarat and Scheingold2005). On the other hand, there was no social mobilisation of this kind for conflicts with a neighbour, which involve a more symmetrical relationship between the parties.

3.3 How to measure inequalities in the context of the French legal system

We explore the influence of nine dimensions: gender, income, education, occupational group, context of employment, age, area of residence, nationality and country of birth (European/non-European). Our approach slightly differs from that used in the majority of previous studies on inequalities in access to justice in three main ways.

First, in contrast with many surveys on experiences with the legal system (Genn, Reference Genn1999; Pleasence et al., Reference Pleasence2006), we did not use skin colour or racial self-identification to explain the formation of disputes and access to the courts. For a long time, France was considered a colour-blind society in which ethnicity was not a legitimate criterion for group description. As a result, there is no official categorisation of ethnic or racial groups in the national census. The two criteria used by statisticians are nationality of the respondents and their country of birth. It has recently been possible to include questions about perceived ethnicity in some surveys, but only if the authors of the research obtain authorisation to collect these data by proving that information about ethnicity is crucial for their study (i.e. in studies specifically focusing on the influence of ethnicity). Because our research looked at practices and representations of the state for the whole population and thus did not focus specifically on issues related to ethnicity, we were not allowed to ask questions about race or skin colour. In this context, we used the two criteria available in our data – nationality and country of birth – but both appeared to be non-significant variables in the three types of conflict, probably owing to the small number of respondents in our sample with a foreign nationality and/or born outside of Europe.

Second, we included in our analysis the occupational group variable – namely technicians, blue-collar employees, professionals, service employees, managerial self-employed and agricultural workers. This criterion has always played a structuring role in defining social inequalities in France. For those who are in the active population, we used their current professional position; for those who are retired or unemployed, we used their last professional position. The relevance of the variable of professional position is not limited to the analysis of conflicts with an employer or a colleague. In France, this criterion determines distinct social practices in many different fields, such as the education system (Bourdieu and Passeron, Reference Bourdieu and Passeron1990), cultural tastes (Coulangeon, Reference Coulangeon2015) and food consumption (Plessz and Gojard, Reference Plessz and Gojard2015).

Third, our survey has taken into account the context of employment – namely the self-employed, private-sector employees and public-sector employees – because, in France, each status involves different systems of social protection and appears to be an important criterion for comparing social groups (Hugrée et al., Reference Hugrée, Etienne, Spire and Matthews2015).

4.1 Who experiences conflict? Inequalities at the bottom of the dispute pyramid

The first stage in the process of legal mobilisation is identifying a problem and considering it an offence or an injurious experience (naming). In order to take this stage into account in our survey, we asked questions about previous experiences of conflicts in different areas. As mentioned above, we will focus here on conflicts with employers or colleagues, with neighbours and with private companies supplying goods and services. We consider the three types of conflict together and we explore the propensity to experience at least one of these conflicts. The logistic regression highlights the characteristics of those who do not engage in conflicts or who do not consider harm to be an injustice (Table 1).

Table 1.

Logistic regression on the probability of experiencing at least one conflict

Ns, not significant; Ref., reference. Source: PREFACE survey, ‘Pratiques et représentations face à l’État’, January 2017 (ELIPSS/CDSP).

Among the respondents, the first common trend is the difference according to gender. Women are less likely than men to perceive an experience as a conflict. This result can be explained by sexist norms of acceptable behaviour for men and women; the decision to trigger a conflict is often guided by shared understandings, beliefs and expectations about how we believe men and women should act (Davis and Greenstein, Reference Davis and Greenstein2009, p. 100). We can make the hypothesis that women experience as many or even more contentious situations than men, but that they do not necessarily describe the situations as conflicts. In conflicts with employers, we can assume that, even if their rights are violated, they do not consider that they are in a position to pursue their rights because they are more likely than men to work in subordinate positions (Savage and Witz, Reference Savage and Witz1992) and they are more rarely unionised (Guillaume, Reference Guillaume2018a) or because they are less likely to perceive injuries as harm. For instance, women do not often view sexual comments from male colleagues as a rights violation (Marshall, Reference Marshall2005). However, in some situations of conflict, the gender difference is blurred. In cases of conflict with a neighbour, perhaps because these conflicts often involve the entire household instead of individuals, the gender difference is less significant than for other types of conflict.

The second common trend is the difference in the level of education. People with a low level of education are less likely to declare a conflict. The most significant difference here is in conflicts with private companies supplying goods and services: 42 per cent of those who have an MA or MS degree (maîtrise) have experienced conflicts of this kind, while only 24 per cent of those without any qualifications have done so. Previous work has demonstrated that the companies involved in these conflicts are not the same: studies have shown that consumers at the top of the social hierarchy have more conflicts with banks and insurance companies (Pinto, Reference Pinto1989, p. 72), while those with a lower level of education have more conflicts with commercial companies such as telecommunication companies. Our survey brings a new element to the analysis: it is not only the type of companies that differs depending on social position, but also the probability of experiencing a conflict with these private organisations. There is also a significant difference for conflicts with an employer or colleague. Forty-three per cent of those with a baccalauréat (a high-school leaving certificate at the age of eighteen) have experienced conflicts at work compared with just 31 per cent of those without any qualifications. The difference is less significant in cases of conflicts with neighbours: 34 per cent of those with a baccalauréat have experienced this type of conflict compared with 28 per cent of those without one. We can assume that those who have obtained a baccalauréat and university degrees experience more conflicts because they consider that they have more legitimacy to define what a conflict is.

We observe a third variation depending on the area of residence. Respondents living in rural areas and small towns of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants are less likely to declare conflicts than others. In such cases, we can assume that it may be more costly to engage in conflict when living in a small, close-knit community: some situations between local actors may be seen as disputes and not as conflicts.

Age is also a significant factor, particularly because respondents aged under twenty-nine or over sixty are less exposed to conflicts than other respondents. For those aged between thirty and fifty-nine, the probability of experiencing conflicts is greater. Two elements can explain this difference. First, in relation to conflicts with employers or colleagues in the workplace, people aged between thirty and fifty-nine are those most likely to be in work: in France, many of those aged under twenty-nine are still in training or occupy temporary positions, which makes it harder to react to labour conflicts. Second, concerning conflicts with neighbours, age is correlated to housing-occupation status: among those who have experienced neighbourhood conflicts, 19 per cent of those aged under twenty-nine are homeowners (and 81 per cent are tenants), whereas 69 per cent of those aged over twenty-nine are homeowners (and 31 per cent are tenants). It is between the ages of thirty and fifty-nine that people tend to become the owners of their main homes, which can lead to conflicts related to noise, property boundaries or lifestyle.

These variations in the propensity to name a situation as a conflict reveal that the first stage in the process of legal mobilisation is related to a set of social characteristics that contribute to the feeling of being entitled to consider a dispute as a conflict. The four relevant characteristics – namely gender, level of education, area of residence and age – suggest a divide between respondents with sufficient resources to engage in a conflict and those who do not feel legitimate to place themselves in a conflict situation.

4.2 The implications of respondents’ first reactions to their conflicts

Once people have identified conflicts, they may have various reactions. We now focus on the subpopulation of the 1,690 respondents who have experienced at least one conflict with a private company, with employers or colleagues, or with a neighbour: 890 have experienced one of these conflicts, 556 have experienced two of them and 244 have experienced three of them. We distinguish four reactions: to do nothing; to manage their conflict by themselves; to get advice from a non-legal professional, such as a trade unionist, a labour inspector, a psychologist, an insurance provider or a mediator; or to turn to a legal professional, such as a private lawyer, a conciliation officer or a notary. These different options are of course not exclusive, and each respondent may, for the same conflict, solicit several people to advise and support them. We will highlight the influence of respondents’ social characteristics on their first reaction to their conflict and on their propensity to contact legal intermediaries. We will examine in the next section how the first response shapes the decision of whether to turn to the courts.

When we consider all types of conflict together, three main criteria influence how respondents react and resolve their conflicts. The first criterion is occupational group. Respondents who work in low-paying jobs and who lack security in employment are those who most often turn to non-legal professionals to help them (a nonprofit organisation, a public administration, a labour union, etc.). But they make relatively little use of legal professionals. Significantly, blue-collar employees and service employees stand out from the other groups because they are those who use legal professionals the least. By contrast, respondents who work as managerial self-employed and small entrepreneurs are less frequently helped by non-legal professionals but are the most likely to seek the help of legal professionals (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

The first response according to occupational group. N = 1,610. Source: PREFACE Survey, ‘Pratiques et représentations face à l’État’, January 2017 (ELIPSS/CDSP).

The distinction between public-sector employees, private-sector employees and the self-employed (context of employment) is also significant in explaining the type of intermediary the plaintiff contacted: more than half of the public-sector employees contacted a non-legal professional, whereas this was the case for 43 per cent of the private-sector employees and only 35 per cent of the self-employed. But when it comes to contacting a legal professional, the self-employed were much more likely to use a legal professional (12 per cent) than employees from the public (7 per cent) and private (6 per cent) sectors were. This difference in the propensity to contact a legal professional can be explained by the fact that the self-employed and small entrepreneurs are the most likely to have previously been in contact with a legal professional or to personally know a lawyer. In a study conducted among taxpayers, it was found that the self-employed deferred to their accountant or lawyer as soon as they had the least conflict with the tax administration (Spire, Reference Spire2018). Significantly, 10 per cent of them turn to a specialist to fill in their tax form, while only 2 per cent of the whole population does this. Symmetrically, they are also the most likely to turn to a legal professional when they experience a conflict.

The third criterion is age. Younger respondents are less likely to turn to legal intermediaries when they face a conflict than older respondents. This is not only true for contact with a legal professional, but also for advice from a non-legal professional. Indeed, 31 per cent of respondents aged under twenty-nine turned to a non-legal professional compared with 49 per cent of those aged over fifty. Similarly, 3 per cent of respondents aged under thirty-nine turned to a legal professional to resolve their conflict compared with 12 per cent of respondents aged between fifty and fifty-nine.

When respondents experience a conflict, contact with a legal intermediary varies significantly depending on their social characteristics. We observe a clear divide between those who are networked and have had previous connections with legal professionals, namely the self-employed, managers and small entrepreneurs or the oldest respondents, and those who lack these types of resources, namely blue-collar workers, private-sector employees and the youngest respondents.

4.3 Going to court or finding another way to resolve a conflict

We will now focus on who turns to the courts and who does not. As previously, we consider the three types of conflict together and we explore the propensity to initiate, or not, legal action in at least one of these conflicts. It is important to mention here that the propensity to take legal action varies depending on the type of conflict, as respondents who experienced a conflict with employers or colleagues more frequently turned to the courts than those who experienced other types of conflict (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Logistic regression on the probability of initiating at least one legal action

Ref., reference. Source: PREFACE survey, ‘Pratiques et représentations face à l’État’, January 2017 (ELIPSS/CDSP).

4.3.1 The decisive influence of contact with a legal intermediary

All other things being equal, contact with a legal intermediary, who may be a legal professional or a non-legal professional, has a very significant impact on the decision to take the case to court. As expected, the probability of turning to the courts is the highest when respondents contacted a legal professional: 55 per cent of conflicts in which respondents contacted a legal professional were taken to court (Figure 3). More importantly, our survey shows that getting advice from a non-legal professional is also significant. Conflicts that individual claimants first tried to resolve by turning to a non-legal professional are much more likely to be taken to court (16 per cent) than conflicts that respondents first tried to resolve by themselves (4 per cent) and, obviously, those in which respondents did nothing (0 per cent). These non-legal professionals may refer to different types of actors: in a conflict with an employer, it may be a union delegate or a work inspector; in a conflict with a neighbour, a local administration or nonprofit organisation; in a conflict with a private company, a consumer association or a mediator. In France, most of these intermediaries are not legal professionals, but they often have legal knowledge and expertise, and they are used to going to court. They thus usually consider the use of the law as a relevant tool for solving a conflict.

Figure 3.

Probability of a conflict being taken to court. N = 1,681 (number of conflicts reported by respondents). Source: PREFACE Survey, ‘Pratiques et représentations face à l’État’, January 2017 (ELIPSS/CDSP).

These figures show that contact with a non-legal professional, or even more significantly with a legal professional, is the most important step in the decision to take legal action. Knowing how to seek advice, how to choose the right intermediary and how to adapt one's strategy according to the advice received are all factors that facilitate or impede use of the courts and, as a consequence, that amplify pre-existing social inequalities among plaintiffs.

4.4 Unequal satisfaction with the outcome of the conflict

Inequalities among litigants are not limited to their unequal access to the civil justice system. Satisfaction with the outcome of the conflict is also a key element, whether the conflict was resolved through a trial or through an extralegal mechanism. Our analysis demonstrates three main dimensions of unequal satisfaction with the outcome.

First, satisfaction with the outcome of the conflict is higher among respondents who did not turn to the courts. Indeed, if we compare respondents’ satisfaction with the outcome of the conflict, those who were the most satisfied are those who did not turn to the courts and who found an extralegal solution to their conflict. This result is important because it shows that going to court is not necessarily the best way to enforce one's rights: 49 per cent of those who resolved their conflicts in courtFootnote ³ were satisfied with the outcome of their conflict compared with 69 per cent of those who resolved their conflict outside of court. Such a significant gap can probably be explained by two reasons. First, respondents who decided to turn to the courts spent money, time and energy in their trial. Throughout this process, they nurtured higher expectations and hopes regarding the outcome of their trial than those who resolved their conflicts outside the courtroom. As a result, they are less likely to be satisfied with the decision because of their personal involvement in the conflict. Second, once they decided to take legal action, they gave the judge the power to make a decision to resolve their conflict and were no longer involved in its resolution. Thus, they were more likely to feel dispossessed of their conflict and the decision associated with it than those who negotiated a solution with the other party.

Second, contact with a legal intermediary influences satisfaction with the outcome, but not in the same way for all plaintiffs. If we focus only on respondents who contacted a legal professional, whether they turned to the courts or resolved their conflict outside of court, we observe that satisfaction with the outcome of the conflict seems to vary depending on context of employment. Although our sample of respondents who contacted a legal professional is too small to make general statements (N = 122), it is relevant to highlight that 90 per cent of the self-employed respondents who got in contact with a lawyer were satisfied with the outcome of the conflict, while this rate falls to 70 per cent for private-sector employees and to 67 per cent for public-sector employees. This difference suggests that contact with a legal professional does not influence the dispute process in the same way for all plaintiffs: the assistance of a lawyer seems more useful in obtaining satisfaction for the self-employed than for employees.

Third, satisfaction with the outcome of the conflict depends on plaintiffs’ economic capital and, more precisely, on their income (Figure 4). The higher their household income, the more likely people are to be satisfied with the outcome of the conflict. Interestingly, we observe a more significant impact for litigated conflicts: income is a more determining factor in satisfaction with the outcome when the judge makes a decision than when a solution is found outside the courtroom. This result sheds light on the unequal experiences with the legal system (Spire and Weidenfeld, Reference Spire and Weidenfeld2011): when people turn to the courts, the wealthiest respondents are much more likely to be satisfied with the legal decision than low-income respondents.

Figure 4.

Satisfaction with the outcome depending on monthly income. Population: respondents who have experienced at least one conflict (N = 1,690). Source: PREFACE survey, ‘Pratiques et représentations face à l’État’, January 2017 (ELIPSS/CDSP).