Recent years have seen a growing focus on legal empowerment — the use of law or rights specifically to benefit the disadvantaged — by international development agencies, foundations, policy institutes and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).  This has justifiably generated an increased interest in identifying ways of ascertaining its impact.

This Guide seeks to contribute to the evolving understanding and discussion of this challenge.   Its four central purposes are to:

• address selected issues concerning LE (and much other development) evaluation;
• suggest some ways of evaluating or otherwise reviewing LE work;
• describe some kinds of LE impact; and
• provide examples of actual LE impact, coupled with the research methods employed to ascertain it.