Pursuing Law's Promise
PURSUING LAW’S PROMISE:
RESEARCHING ACCESS TO JUSTICE IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA
Rebecca L. Sandefur (project's contact author)
Robert L. Nelson
Laura Beth Nielsen
Aaron C. Smyth
More than 150 million Americans currently confront civil justice problems, but we know
surprisingly little about how they experience and respond to them. Most people do not take their
justice problems to attorneys nor pursue them in any court. When low- and moderate-income people do make it to court, they very often appear unrepresented by any advocate. Local, state, and federal governments, generous individuals, and private foundations contribute more than 1 billion dollars each year to fund civil legal assistance for low- and moderate-income people, but we know little about what services this funding supports, how these services match up to the public’s legal needs, the most effective and efficient ways to provide such services, or the real costs and social benefits of helping people with their civil justice problems. Through a series of innovative empirical research projects, Pursuing Law’s Promise investigates Americans’ experiences with their civil justice problems and the institutions of remedy that exist to serve them. The goal is to produce new knowledge essential for policy makers and service providers as they seek to respond to the legal needs of the public today.
Though the initial research projects focus on civil justice, the initiative may expand to include empirical research on criminal justice in the future.
Projects:
Access Across America
The first project of Pursuing Law’s Promise is a map of the national access to civil justice infrastructure. In the United States, access to civil justice for the indigent and other targeted groups is provided in a wide variety of ways. The report describes, on a state-by-state basis, the fundamental access to justice infrastructure that exits in the United States and Puerto Rico today, focusing on five components:
- Delivery. How access services are delivered, including court-based, neighborhood office, and telephone- and web-provided legal advice, information, and assistance with justice problems and court processes.
- Connecting with assistance. How people can connect with access to civil justice resources, such as through hotlines, local offices, court-based programs, web interfaces, and co-location with other kinds of services.
- Funding. How access programs, which are typically locally initiated, are funded.
- Coordination. How access services and funding are coordinated, including through lead agencies, state access commissions, central funders, and informal networks.
- Emerging definitions of access. How ethical rules are changing to create new forms of both subsidized and market-based sources of civil legal assistance, such as through limited scope lawyers’ services, collaborative lawyering, and the availability of nonlawyer legal technicians.
To download the full report, click here
To download the Executive Summary, click on the cover image below
