Executive Summary

Each year, Americans confront more than 150 million new civil justice problems involving basic human needs, such as seeking a safe place to live, maintaining a meaningful way to make a dignified living, and caring for those who depend on them. Every year, as many as 120 million of those problems go unresolved. Yet only some Americans recognize that these are matters of civil justice. Even fewer have access to the affordable and quality legal support needed to help resolve these problems. This is the civil justice gap: the disparity between the legal needs of Americans and the resources available to meet those needs.

For the past ten years, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has worked to understand, measure, and advocate for innovative solutions to the civil justice gap. Since 2014, the Making Justice Accessible project has highlighted the scale of the civil justice gap by recognizing its social, economic, and human costs and calling for improved data collection. The work also looks ahead to set standards for civil justice and to ensure all Americans have meaningful access to justice. In 2021, the report Civil Justice for All articulated seven strategies for closing the civil justice gap through a variety of approaches being used across the nation. That publication concludes with a call to establish a new national organization, or team of organizations, that can coordinate the multiple efforts needed to achieve the goal of access to justice for all.

This report, Achieving Civil Justice, highlights the strategies and initiatives that are helping to advance new solutions and sustain effective models. Thanks to tireless work by leaders and institutions working on civil justice issues, efforts across the country are improving the delivery of civil legal assistance through new training programs and reform efforts, partnerships that integrate legal services into other community engagements, and leveraging technology and simplification—all to design solutions to the civil justice gap that respond to the communities they intend to benefit. As a clear picture of their individual and combined work emerges, it becomes evident what a pluralistic and pragmatic civil justice effort can achieve: a people-centered approach in which Americans can access the support they need, when they need it, from trusted, quality providers. Courts and lawyers are the essential lifeblood of the civil justice system. But this transformation cannot be done by courts and lawyers alone. Their work must be paired with the efforts of a broader network of community justice providers, law schools, researchers, technologists, allied professionals, community leaders, and business and philanthropic leaders. In the pages that follow, these innovations are described in sections that roughly follow the experience of Americans moving through the civil justice system. Both old and new, these efforts involve listening, offering legal help, using innovative technology, training, and building partnerships.

• Listening to and learning from underserved communities. This has included adapting tribal communities’ models, such as coordinating with state agencies and national organizations to train local paraprofessionals to serve health and legal needs. It has also enabled people to explain to local officials their difficulties in navigating legal problems, thus helping the government to create programs that better serve them. When efforts to help Americans navigate civil justice issues start by listening to those who need that help, those solutions and policies are far more effective in providing communities what they need.
• Offering legal help where people already are. Offering legal assistance from doctor’s offices, public libraries, and mobile courts reaches people where they already seek help. When people encounter legal information and assistance where they are already tackling life problems, they can get help that they may not have realized they needed—and avoid becoming mired in legal crisis.
• Using technology to make it easier to gain access. Many courts and legal services offices have updated their operations to offer Americans access to justice via newer, streamlined technologies. Websites, artificial intelligence (AI)–enabled chatbots, document automation, electronic filing, and integrated case management systems—systems many Americans are familiar with by now—have enabled far more people to, for example, quickly file an objection to an illegal eviction notice or “appear” in court without having to travel. These initiatives suggest a new minimum standard for legal services, including broad adoption of user-friendly websites, standardized e-filing, digitized and automated court forms, and critical investments in foundational digital infrastructure needed to pursue emerging technologies such as generative AI.
• Training more people to support Americans with legal needs. In many circumstances, licensed lawyers are not available. Many organizations and jurisdictions are developing new ways to train professionals who can support or even represent Americans facing pressing needs, such as access to housing or experiencing crises like domestic violence. To make this possible, states are adopting new rules and reforming regulations to allow advocates to represent and give advice on issues that most Americans would otherwise struggle with alone. Nonprofit and membership organizations are training volunteers to help vulnerable neighbors with common issues. The evidence, training, and resources that these efforts are producing offer models that newer efforts can replicate or adapt.
• Building partnerships with philanthropies and businesses to expand funding, resources, and innovation in the field. The collaborations discussed here have enabled a broader array of actors to accomplish much more, including convening stakeholders, launching and refining pilots, developing technological fixes, distilling practical insights about what works, and raising awareness among citizens, community leaders, businesspeople, and funders about the tremendous need. Major funders like the Kresge Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts as well as leading businesses like Kaiser Permanente have vastly expanded the number of Americans who can use the civil justice system for problems large and small, accomplishing things that would otherwise be out of reach for courts and legal aid organizations.

These efforts reveal that, while far too many Americans continue to fall through the civil justice gap, those who wish to close that gap have innumerable opportunities to make American legal systems available to all. To close the civil justice gap, it is critical that this work continue. For legal leaders, communities, nonprofits, and individuals who want to help widen access to justice, this publication identifies four steps anyone can apply to their work in civil justice.

• First, organize civil justice efforts around the people seeking civil legal help—the self-represented litigants—rather than lawyers, legal systems, or courts. Strategies include creating information access points, such as self-help centers or kiosks, that offer free access to legal resources.
• Second, coordinate, connect, and participate with local, state, and national groups that actively engage on listservs, conferences, virtual meetings, and other forums to share best practices, scholarship, and emerging strategies. These networks share opportunities and best practices for new participants or professionals seeking to learn or partner. Civil justice efforts need not proceed alone.
• Third, embrace an evidence-based approach. To date, research has shown that judges’, lawyers’, and court systems’ views of justice do not align with the public’s views of justice. Reorientation is needed. Look closely at the evidence to guide any proposed action.
• Finally, adjust tactics and strategy as projects evolve. Expect projects to develop through numerous stages, including identifying the need being addressed, proving the concept, learning and improving, and scaling up solutions through partnerships and expansion so others can adapt and replicate. At each stage, the project strategy should match the resources, stakeholders, and milestones needed to move forward successfully.

The goal of civil justice for all is urgent, important, and achievable. By strengthening the efforts detailed in this report and more like them, with increased federal, state, and private funding and resources, Americans can realize the promise of equal justice under law.

Successful projects and ideas are making a difference in the legal services ecosystem. As will be recounted in more detail later, some are pilots or proof-of-concept projects that have been undertaken with the blessing—and, on occasion, under the edict—of local state courts. Others were seeded by ingenious inventors and individuals who partnered with foundations or businesses. Still others are as yet only promising ideas, some emerging from innovative scholarship, both empirical and theoretical. These are showcased here in the hope that they may move forward at least as experiments. What all these developments share is that they are reliably grown from a local, focused undertaking and born from real experiences with the civil justice gap. They build on local knowledge, strategic assessments, methodical planning, and examined evidence.