Conclusion
This chapter has demonstrated that there was a pent-up need for legal advice and aid especially among groups such as country-dwellers that could not afford to consult professional legal experts or such experts were not locally available.
In towns, the question of access to legal aid for women and the poor in general was raised in the later nineteenth century. Even if advocates for the poor were hired in some larger cities at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the countryside lacked such legal aid. Local administration became more complex and many important legal reforms had an effect on the life of people in the countryÂside. New laws raised many practical questions relating to their implemenÂtation on the local level. Newspapers, increasing in number, catered to this demand both out of economic and ideological reasons.The legal “questions and answers” columns in Finnish newspapers apparently began spontaneously with random legal questions from the public, answered by newspaper editors or referred to experts. Quickly, some newspapers (e.g. Paivalehti and Helsingin Sanomat) made such regÂular columns special features of the paper in the 1890s and 1900s. So did other journals such as the agricultural Pellervo. The Q&A columns proÂvided its users with access to legal expertise, a possibility to consult faraway experts that would otherwise have been unavailable because of the disÂtance and costs. For example, Helsingin Sanomat employed top experts, living in Helsinki, who were beyond the reach of the great majority of the national newspaper’s readers. The ability to consult them for basically the price of a postal fee provided an important channel of legal counsel. On the downside was the uncertainty that the question would be answered, possible problems of misunderstanding either the question or answer without face-to-face communication, and the possible delay in receiving the advice.
Newspapers had an interest in strengthening the nexus between their editorial staff and their readers. The Q&A columns provided a platform for ordinary people from all over the country and experts to interact. Many of the newspapers were also on a mission to instruct the Finnish reading public in legal matters and new legal language. The columns disÂseminated legal knowledge adding to the public’s education and benefit. In addition, newspapers had an economic incentive. The existence of such columns was used in commercial advertisements, sending the public the message that the paper was worth preordering. Several Finnish newspapers used their legal Q&A columns to attract subscribers as did some U.S. newspapers.[693]
The question and answer columns do not indicate how the advice proÂvided was understood, received, or whether it was followed. Yet, the value of Q&A columns went beyond the inquirers, their local communities, experts, and newspapers. They provided its readers with much-needed legal knowledge—as did similar columns in the U.S. and Germany—and contributed to the legal literacy of the Finnish people all over the country. Law helped people govern the country at the local level and thus, legal advice in the newspapers served the nation-building processes in Finland.