The Legal Policy Research Unit is part of the Institute of Criminology & Legal Policy, situated in the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Helsinki. As an independent and non-partisan research group, we conduct research on a wide number of topics on legal policy. The topics include everyday legal problems and needs, access to justice, mediation, debt problems and their enforcement, legislative policy and processes and the digitalization of law.

Founded in 1974, as part of the National Reseach Institute of Legal Policy, we bring academic rigour and scholarly attention to problems at the intersection of law and society without losing sight of our end goal − creating impact. Our interdisciplinary and people-centric focus, diverse academic backgrounds and collaborative mindset make us a vibrant community led by curiosity and commitment to find answers to urgent problems.

We work in close collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, as we have specific tasks of analyzing trend in legal policy, as specified in the law on Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy (1139/2007). The Legal Policy Research Unit is led by Kati Rantala, the research director.