Speaker Series: Ellie Frazier

Over the past three decades, programs training nonlawyers, such as limited licensed practitioners (LLPs) and community justice workers (CJWs), have arisen in the United State in response to access to justice gaps. This project will address two central questions about nonlawyer professionals in the United States: (1) How do they view formal legal education in relation to their justice work, particularly when compared to other educational pathways for achieving access to justice and community activism goals? (2) How do structural, socioeconomic, and interpersonal factors shape their perceptions of and engagement with the legal profession? Expanding on comparative research in South Africa and Sierra Leone on nonlawyer programs, this research will draw on theoretical frameworks from literatures on the legal profession, access to justice, legal consciousness, and state capacity to move beyond describing what non-lawyers do to examine how they understand and articulate their position within the legal system. It aims to generate meaningful points of comparison between different categories of nonlawyers to illuminate how different professionalization pathways shape nonlawyers’ perceptions of their roles relative to attorneys and their connections to community activism and political change. The study’s findings will seek to contribute to scholarship on access to justice interventions, professionalization processes, and ongoing debates about legal education value and regulatory frameworks for nonlawyer practice.

To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 

Ellie Frazier (she/her) a political science and sociolegal studies scholar whose research and teaching focus broadly on access to justice, social movements, and comparative politics. Her dissertation investigates the political, social, and legal processes through which nonlawyer services emerged and evolved across colonial, authoritarian, and democratic state building in South Africa. By shedding light on these dynamics, Frazier’s dissertation seeks to clarify the opportunities and challenges of integrating non-lawyers into democratic institutions as part of access to justice initiatives; it also broadly highlights how these forms of sociolegal assistance both challenge and reinforce the boundaries of the legal profession.