September 22, 2025 • 45 mins
With as many as 120 million legal problems going unresolved in America each year, traditional lawyer-centered approaches to access to justice have consistently failed to meet the scale of need. But what if the solution is not just about providing more legal services — what if it lies in fundamentally rethinking who can provide legal help?
In today’s episode, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by two of the nation’s leading researchers on access to justice: Rebecca Sandefur, professor and director of the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and Matthew Burnett, director of research and programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.
They argue that the access to justice crisis is actually a crisis of democracy. As cofounders of Frontline Justice, they have been pioneering research on "justice workers" — community members trained to help their neighbors navigate legal issues. Their recent article in the South Carolina Law Review, “Justice Work as Democracy Work: Reimagining Access to Justice as Democratization,” makes a provocative case: When people cannot access their own law, democracy itself fails. They present compelling evidence from Alaska, where nearly 200 community justice workers now serve over 40 rural communities, achieving a 1-to-25 return on investment while dramatically expanding legal aid's reach.
In today’s conversation, Sandefur and Burnett discuss the mounting evidence for justice worker effectiveness, including research from the U.K. demonstrating that trained non-lawyers often outperform attorneys on specialized tasks. They also discuss recent breakthroughs — including unprecedented support from both the Conference of Chief Justices and the American Bar Association — and examine what obstacles remain.
Sandefur and Burnett challenge the legal profession's monopoly on law, arguing that regulatory capture has estranged Americans from their own justice system. They envision justice workers as agents of democratization, expanding not just who can access legal help, but who can participate meaningfully in working democracy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
you
Today on Law Next, access to justice remains a persistent challenge.
The study is showing that as many as 120 million justice problems go unresolved everyyear.
Traditional approaches centered on lawyers and courts have failed to meet the scale ofneed, leaving millions of Americans unable to navigate basic legal issues like housing
(00:24):
disputes, wage theft, or family matters.
But what if we're going after this problem all wrong?
What if the solution isn't just about providing more legal services, but aboutfundamentally rethinking who can provide legal help and how that help is delivered?
Today, I'm joined by two leading researchers who argue that the access to justice crisisis actually a crisis of democracy and that the path forward lies in empowering everyday
(00:51):
community members to become justice workers.
Rebecca Sandefur is a professor at Arizona State University and faculty fellow at theAmerican Bar Foundation.
Matthew Burnett is director of research and programs for the Access to Justice ResearchInitiative at the American Bar Foundation and an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law.
(01:12):
Together, they co-founded Frontline Justice, a national project working to expandcommunity-based justice work.
And they've just published a provocative article in the South Carolina Law Review titled,Justice Work as Democracy Work, Reimagining Access to Justice as Democratization.
They argue that when people can't access their own law, democracy itself fails.
(01:36):
And they make the case that justice workers, community members trained to help theirneighbors with legal issues, represent a fundamental shift from the lawyer dominated
approach that has defined American legal services.
I'm Bob Ambrosio.
This is Law Next, the podcast that features the innovators and entrepreneurs who aredriving what's next in law.
(01:57):
Before we get to that conversation, please take a moment to hear from the sponsors who sogenerously support this podcast.
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Now let's get to today's conversation.
Rebecca, Matthew, welcome to Law Next.
(03:26):
Good to see you both.
Before we launch into the meat of what we want to talk about today, it's for anybodywatching, listening, who may not be familiar with you.
don't you kind of give me a little bit, the nutshell version of who you are and what youdo.
Rebecca, you want to kick it off?
Sure.
So I'm Rebecca Sandifer.
I'm a professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State Universityand a faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation.
(03:53):
I'm basically a sociologist, a researcher.
And with Matthew Burnett, I co-founded Frontline Justice, which is a national nonpartisanresearch-based project to give people access to their own law and strengthen democracy by
mobilizing a national movement of community justice workers.
And you are a return guest to this podcast.
were on this podcast back in June of 2020.
(04:14):
We were just talking before we hit the record button here on what an unusual time thatwas.
And here we are again talking in what is unfortunately an unusual time.
Matthew, what about you?
Hi, I'm Matthew Burnett.
I'm the director of research and programs for the access to justice research in the Shtibat the American Bar Foundation, which
(04:38):
Becky founded about 15 years ago.
I'm also a visiting scholar at ASU and I teach at Georgetown University Law Center whereI'm an adjunct professor.
So I know that I think the occasion in a sense for us to talk is perhaps a recent articlethat you've published in the South Carolina Law Review, is that what it was?
(04:59):
Entitled Justice Work as Democracy Work, Reimagining Access to Justice as Democratization.
And you talk in this article about
the concept of justice workers.
It's a topic we've talked about on this show a few times in the past.
I've had Nicole Nelson, who's the executive director of Frontline Justice, which two ofyou co-founded on this show in the past, to kind of talk about that.
(05:25):
uh But uh I wonder, what's really interesting, I think, about this article that you'vejust published is that
You are kind of reframing the conversation, I think, a little bit uh as maybe this is theway you've always talked about it.
But for me, it looks like a reframing of this idea of access to justice as really accessto democracy.
(05:48):
uh You want to kind of give us an introduction to what your thesis is here?
Becky, you want to kick it off?
I was looking to Matthew to kick.
Okay, Matthew, you want to kick it off.
Whichever.
can do a coin toss.
Yeah, I mean, I think that this has been a topic that's really been of interest andanimated a lot of our work on justice workers, which um has largely been focused on like,
(06:15):
how do you design these programs?
What do we know?
What's the evidence about how to make them effective and scalable and sustainable?
um But something I think that's been core to that has been ah why is this important beyondjust
people helping other people.
Like, why do we care about this as uh a core kind of approach to access to justice?
(06:37):
And that has a lot to do with things like justice workers are engaged in civicparticipation, justice workers are democratization of law and giving people their own law.
And I think also um in the moment that we're in, uh it's sort of uh an alternative to someof the
(06:57):
collapse or deconstruction of law, rule of law, and an opportunity for everyday people toparticipate in the justice system in new ways.
And so I think that's something we wanted to write about and did so in this article.
Becky, I'll let you add.
The only thing I would add is it has long struck me as really weird that law is a bigpublic thing that in a democracy is all of ours and yet so many people are shut out of it
(07:28):
in so many ways.
ah And so one of the things that I think is really exciting and hopeful about justiceworkers is that they're a way of opening that up, both because they can help people
connect when they have issues, but because they are themselves people, just regularpeople.
um engaging with the law in a more authoritative and effective way than has been the casein the past often, I think.
(07:53):
Well, they shut out.
also, you the point in the article, and I think this is something people involved in AssetJustice recognize, which is that a lot of A to J problems, I think you used the phrase,
are peripheral to the resolution of most, that the formal justice systems are peripheralto the resolution of most civil justice problems.
(08:14):
And you talk about the fact that most people do not recognize the justiciable problemsthat they face in life as having legal dimensions.
mean, it's almost...
You're almost basically saying that a lot of what we talk about as access to justiceproblems exist outside the traditional legal system as we think about it.
Yes, in part because, as you pointed out, I mean, if you ask someone, is your employer notpaying you overtime or are you not getting vacation that you're entitled to?
(08:45):
What kind of problem is that?
They'll say, well, the problem is my employer's a jerk.
Or, you know, this is really unfair.
But they won't say, well, it's wage theft, incite the statute or tell you what stateadministrative agencies should help them.
And so part of what's
hopeful about justice workers is they are people who have the knowledge to make thatconnection, to help people understand they have a problem they can hold an institution to
(09:09):
account about.
uh But they're already there.
So they're already your neighbor or the librarian or at your church or uh you don't haveto go through this process of identifying this problem and figuring out who would be
helpful because somebody else is already identifying and is already there being helpful.
(09:29):
So what are we talking about here?
How do you define what it means to be a justice worker?
What is a justice worker?
So I think there's a broader way to look at that, um which is um to just see the enormouswealth and expertise that exists in communities and to ensure that that um is available to
(09:53):
folks to help them with their ex-to-justice problems.
um
And I think there's a more narrow way, which is the way in which we begin to define itthrough regulation.
so Alaska has adopted, as I think Nicole and others have talked about on your podcast, aquite broad waiver that allows Alaska Legal Services, the statewide provider, to supervise
(10:16):
folks across Alaska.
And there are more than 200 now community justice workers in over 40 villages and citiesand towns, which is an exceptional kind of reach and potential
uh opportunity around particularly questions of rural access to justice.
know, other states have done other things.
So Arizona has a more narrow justice worker provision.
(10:37):
There are other states like South Carolina and Delaware and Hawaii that have specificprovisions for child custody and evictions and housing issues.
That definition will probably shift over time, but we hope that it will be broad andinclusive and ensure that it's actually supporting the work that needs to happen to meet
this enormous need, which
(10:58):
As we know from the LSE Justice Gap Survey, less than 10 % of low-income people get accessto meaningful or enough legal assistance.
Well, the other thing that happened, Rebecca, when you were on this show back in 2020, wewere talking, I think, just days or weeks after the Alaska, or rather the Washington State
(11:20):
Supreme Court had decided to sunset the limited license legal technician program there.
Is that?
Was that an example of a justice worker or is that a different kind of an initiative?
mean, does that fall within the purview of what you're talking about or how is thatdifferent?
So I think probably if you ask different people who are involved in this activity, theymight draw the lines differently.
(11:45):
So I'll just say the way I think about it.
Matthew may not be right on the same page.
uh But so justice workers are people who are authorized.
So they're allowed to do the thing.
And they're competent to do the thing.
uh But they're not necessarily going to be licensed.
So one of the problems with the Washington state program was
(12:08):
the licensing requirements were so burdensome.
It was really, really hard, like 3000 hours of supervised practice, two or three differentbar exams, malpractice insurance, which I believe at that time Washington state attorneys
did not have to carry.
And so just made it very hard for that program to grow.
And if you look at licensed paralegal programs around the country, they have been prettyslow to grow.
(12:31):
So Americans will have 150 million to 250 million new civil justice problems every year.
And I haven't looked at the last count of licensed independent paralegals.
So that would be people authorized through licensing for the limited practice of lawwithout the supervision of an attorney.
Right.
But I think it's what three or four hundred helping three hundred and forty millionAmericans.
(12:57):
just it doesn't scale fast enough.
And that was one of the reasons
that it was so vulnerable when various political actors didn't want it in the state ofWashington.
Right, right.
What's the argument for focusing on justice workers?
mean, what is it that justice workers can bring to this problem that lawyers alone can't,or some of the other uh legal services offices can't, some of the other more traditional
(13:23):
and established means of trying to address the access to justice problem?
Well, I'll start very sort of big picture, which is uh
just to address how weird it is that everyday people in this country, in a world that is,as Gillian Hadfield says, law-thick, right, who have to negotiate the law in order to make
a living, order to care for dependents, in order to do all the things they need to do,can't help one another with those problems.
(13:51):
That's not unique, but unusual among the things that we engage with and...
have to accommodate in our lives.
And so I think part of it is this democratization of access to justice is aboutrecognizing that, that that exclusion or sort of disconnect between people and their own
(14:14):
law, which they actually vote for legislatures to enact or legislators to enact.
You used the word in your article that lawyers have captured the legal system, which isa...
They're holding it hostage, I guess you're saying.
And it's a regulatory capture, but it's also, it chills democracy, right?
It captures the way in which people engage directly with democracy, which is through law.
(14:36):
ah So I think em that that's the kind of perspective that I would bring at the high level.
And then I think, Becky, I'll let you speak more to the ways in which we're thinking aboutthese programs in the world and their impact.
Well, I think maybe if, if I were to throw out three things that immediately come to mind,there's accessibility, there's representation and there's scalability.
(15:01):
these justice worker services are not expensive to the people who use them.
They're already present to the people who use them because they're distributed acrosscommunities.
Justice workers right now, Matthew could tell you the figures for Alaska for some, fromsome research he's leading there, but
They're much more diverse than the legal profession.
So they represent the experiences of our very diverse democracy much more effectively.
(15:26):
And they have the capacity to scale up much faster than lawyers can because that's sevenyears of school and $200,000 of educational debt and lots and lots of exams and so on.
It opens up the effervescence of what's possible in a way that we haven't seen, I think,in other projects giving people access.
(15:47):
If I remember right about Alaska, the justice worker program there, the justice workersare already expected to be or already serving in kind of community facing roles outside
their justice worker role.
I mean, they're working in social services agencies or community organizations orsomething like that.
Do I have that right?
Yeah, many of them are.
um So they're embedded in community based organizations that could be a tribal healthorganization or another kind of organization.
(16:09):
They're also just volunteers and neighbors of, you know, folks who who want to do justicework.
And so.
And then some of them, a few of them are on staff at the LSC and they serve that role andare funded obviously by LSC.
Yeah.
So you see, you you talk about the availability, the diversity, some of the other factorsthat seem to make sense in why justice workers would be valuable in enhancing access to
(16:36):
justice.
Do we have any kind of real evidence of their effectiveness to look at?
Is there any data?
there any empirical?
evidence that this kind of a program works?
Well, Becky can talk about the broader evidence base that's been developed over the lastcouple of decades.
In Alaska, I think really kind of profound uh evidence that's coming out of that program.
(17:01):
One is, as Becky said, about a third of the justice workers are Alaska Native.
So that actually over-represents the state in which about 20 % of the population is AlaskaNative.
about three times the representation on ALSC staff.
So it's real in terms of the diversity and the linguistic and cultural competency andexpertise that comes with that.
(17:23):
The other really interesting thing is the rural reach.
So we're seeing impact in communities that not only is there not a law office or a lawyer,but in many cases, the lawyers never step foot in those communities.
And so the idea that we're expanding reach to 40 communities is
as we face in this country, also rural access to justice.
think the crisis is really exciting.
(17:44):
And then I'd say the last thing um from Alaska is just the economic impact.
So we're seeing about a 1 to 25 return in the initial analysis of the case management dataover a few years.
And that's just phenomenal.
think LSC, um the kind of average return on investment is 1 to 7.
So that's over three time increase in that.
(18:06):
impact and that has a lot to do with the model itself.
um Obviously, if ALSC is not, if the legal service provider is not paying these folks, ifthey're paid by the community organization or if they're volunteers, then um that's going
to reduce costs.
I guess the other thing I'd say related to that is that we're seeing community justiceworkers grow in a way in Alaska that pro bono attorneys aren't.
(18:29):
And so you have a kind of flat line of participation among pro bono attorneys throughoutAlaska.
a nice kind of hockey stick curve of community justice workers as more and more peoplelearn about the program and get involved.
So that speaks directly to the question of scale and sustainability over time.
Because obviously there will be attrition there.
Some folks are going to decide that they don't want to do the work or uh they're doingother things.
(18:52):
And so to see that program growth over time is really unusual among existing access tojustice solutions.
Yeah, some other contexts where we see justice workers.
So the state of Utah, as many of your listeners know, has a regulatory sandbox for legalservices.
(19:12):
so entities that want to provide innovative legal services, which could include havingjustice workers provide services, uh can apply.
then the sandbox collects data about them.
And I think Lucy, Rika, and I looked at the data for this about a year ago.
was something like 14,000 to 16,000 services delivered by justice workers to Utah.
(19:33):
with no evidence of consumer harm and no complaints for those services.
So that's a good marker of competence.
And there are other jurisdictions that are not nearly as restrictive as the United Statesin terms of who can practice law.
One of the most prominent ones is probably England and Wales, where anybody can give legaladvice and there are a wide range of legal advice providers.
(19:56):
But also for many years until recent years,
fairly robust legal aid system that was like, it was called Judycare.
So just like Medicare, you get a voucher, you take it to a private lawyer, and then thatperson helps you with your divorce or your eviction or whatever.
And as part of trying to find a way to scale that back in our neoliberal times, theMinistry of Justice commissioned a study that compared the work product of non-lawyer
(20:23):
helpers to solicitors.
And it was a blind peer review study.
So the person who's assessing the work doesn't know whether it was done by a lawyer orsomeone who doesn't have a law license.
And they found that everybody makes mistakes, but about 80 % of the time, both people whoaren't attorneys but are trained and competent and people who are attorneys will do a
competent job.
But interestingly, the people who weren't attorneys were six times more likely to get A'son their assignments, right, to have their work rated as excellent.
(20:51):
uh And that...
probably has something to do with specialization.
So they're not trying to do everything.
They're trying to do one thing or a few things.
So there's good support for this idea that these programs and these folks can be really,really effective, especially when they're targeted to stuff that's really important.
So a lot of the Alaska justice work early was on SNAP benefits and uh incorrect SNAPdenials.
(21:15):
And in the early days, they had 100 % success rate.
But part of what you're hearing about that
monetary return, return on investment that Matthew's talking about is not only can I nowfeed myself and my family, I can spend that money in my community and that has collateral
and concatenating benefits.
And so thinking about where the work can be the most effective or the most impactful isalso a way of thinking about how this can help, right?
(21:41):
How we can help people solve their problems, but also help strengthen communities.
So I take it that what you just said about the evidence regarding the effectiveness ofthese workers also applies to the safety, if that's the right word, of these workers.
Because of course, one of the criticisms or objections we keep hearing from the organizedbar or some sectors of the organized bar anyway is that by authorizing non-lawyers, to use
(22:11):
the phrase, to deliver any kind of legal help,
you're endangering consumers in some way, you know, they may not get the quality of legalservices that they deserve to get.
It sounds like you're saying the evidence is otherwise.
Yeah, the evidence is strongly in favor of competence.
And in Utah's context, which is collecting complaint information, which is where you getethical violations, I suppose, if people recognize them.
(22:39):
We don't see any evidence of that there either.
you
From heard from Rebecca and Matthew, the justice workers can be effective, as has beenmost dramatically demonstrated in Alaska, where justice workers have expanded into more
than 40 rural communities.
We've also heard that trained non-lawyers often outperform attorneys on specific tasks.
(23:05):
But this movement has been gaining momentum in other ways as well.
When we return, we'll explore two major developments from this summer that signal apotential turning point for justice workers in America.
and we'll discuss the obstacles that still stand in the way of broader adoption.
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(24:48):
We're back to Law Next, where we've been discussing the Justice Worker Movement withRebecca Sandefur and Matthew Burnett, who argued that empowering community members to
provide legal help isn't just about access to justice, it's about strengthening democracyitself.
This summer, two notable developments occurred that could signal a turning point for theJustice Worker Movement in the U.S.
(25:08):
As a return, I asked Matthew to tell us about those developments.
We also, later in this half, talk about some of the obstacles that still need to beovercome and
Rebecca's and Matthew's thoughts on how to do that.
So both the Conference of Chief Justices and Court Administrators passed a resolutionsupporting the study and exploration of justice worker programs, uh as well as the ABA
(25:39):
House of Delegates just at the last meeting, Resolution 605.
So that's exciting.
I mean, it's exciting.
think our understanding is there's never been any resolution by the House of Delegatesthat's supported any type of non-lawyer.
So I think that's an exciting shift and certainly an awareness of both the extent of theaccess to justice crisis, but also this is a potential solution.
(26:02):
And what we write in that article is basically, this is great.
It's amazing that this happened in the world and there's this support, but both call forstudying justice workers.
And in order to study justice workers, turns out you need those programs to exist in theworld so that you have some empirical base to say things about them.
And so we make the case in that law, 360 article, that in order to really understand andempirically investigate these programs, we need more programs to exist in the world and
(26:32):
more authorization happening across states so that we can understand what is theireffectiveness, how do they scale, are they sustainable over time, and ask those really
critical questions.
So what progress has been made on that front?
I mean, we've talked a lot already just in this interview about Alaska and it colluded toArizona, Utah.
(26:54):
What's going on elsewhere in the country in terms of adoption of justice worker programs?
Well, so there are, I think, at least 20 states that are actively, and by what I meanactively is like people are actually working to try to think about what this could look
like and what would be appropriate for their state and what they might do.
Another thing that's happening is that frontline justice.
(27:15):
So if we want to scale stuff, it has to be, you have to enable scaling.
So one way to enable scaling is not to put up a bunch of barriers, but another way toenable scaling is to provide a bunch of supports.
And so one of those supports is,
training modules that can be rolled out and customized to specific jurisdictions fairlyeasily so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel each time.
(27:40):
And so Frontline Justices at work with a national coalition at developing some of thosearound those targeted areas that are really consequential for people's lives.
So you're seeing both supports for making it happen and space for making it happen openingup around the country, I think.
I don't know what you want to add, Matthew.
Well, just that Frontline Justice also has a really promising initiative on the use of AIin this context.
(28:04):
So how do we supercharge justice workers using generative AI and
sort of, you know, the cutting edge of technology and those supports.
um And then I think the last thing I would say is that, you know, there's, among all ofthis activity, um there's a number of groups who are thinking very sort of broadly about
(28:24):
how do we make sure this happens in the world.
There's another set of groups that are taking the position that, we just need a bunch ofpilots to figure this out.
And I think one of the things that
that we're really pushing for both within states and nationally is to think beyond thepilot.
The pilot's often the death knell of innovation and access to justice space.
(28:45):
So I think just getting folks to think bigger, right?
So that we're not creating these barriers or constraints on these programs.
We're allowing for true experimentation and obviously having reporting and datarequirements that ensure that there's not consumer harm and that these programs are having
an impact in the world.
Yeah.
(29:06):
You said that sort of the two parts of it are overcoming the obstacles and also providingthe lift from underneath, perhaps.
What are the biggest obstacles that remain at this point?
Is it primarily the UPL statutes in that whole structure?
Or what are some of the other ones that get in the way of the expansion of Justice Worker?
(29:28):
Uh, UPL seems to me like the biggest one.
Mm-hmm.
And it's supported by, mean, supported in part, like, why do we have these rules?
Because we want to protect consumers and make sure that they get competent services.
Well, if that's why we have these rules, let's think about the different ways in which wecould make that happen or the different ways we could deal with errors that people make,
(29:52):
like consumer protection law.
We don't license everything that people do, for example.
I think another part of UPL is it's, when the bar objects to it, it's often based on
myths.
So very poor and marginalized people are not a potential market for legal services at 250or $750 an hour.
(30:16):
The expansion of these programs wouldn't eat anybody's lunch.
think one of the things that so Tom Clark from the National Center of State Courts and Idid a study of the Washington Project, the limited license legal technicians when they
were still operative.
And one of the interesting things, lawyers didn't like them either, because they were
you know, junior lawyers.
(30:36):
One of the things that we found is that many of them worked in law firms.
And so they had their scope of practice, which did not include representation.
So they could connect with market segments that regular lawyers were too expensive for,but then they could unbundle to those lawyers representation.
So there was some limited evidence at that small scale that that opportunity expanded themarket that those law firms were participating in.
(31:04):
So I think helping the legal profession, which right now does control the practice of lawin most places, understand that this is not an economic threat, but rather a support to
our common goal of expanding people's access to their own law.
Any other barriers you see there, Matthew?
(31:24):
uh I'm sure there are others, but I mean, I would say the other barrier potentially isjust imagination, right?
I think we saw something really unique in Alaska, which was, we trust Alaska LegalServices as the statewide legal services provider, and we want to enable them with a rule
that they were, that they participated in creating to allow them to try things and tolearn from them.
(31:50):
And so I think
you know, just beyond the UPL stuff and, and, you know, the kind of the barriers that thatmight be more squarely around regulation.
There's a lot that's just about how programs are designed and implemented in the world.
And I think that it's exciting that that's where we are in the conversation, at least insome contexts now that we're not just fighting against uh the regulatory constraint, but
(32:14):
also thinking about how to best design and develop these programs.
Well, and Matthew, think you said earlier that that's one of the aspects that thatfrontline justice is working on is how to design and train for these programs.
Are you, meaning you frontline justice, actively working with, I don't know, courts,legislatures, bars, you know, other organizations that can be influential in this area to
(32:39):
try and generate these more of these programs?
Yes, we will support and work with anybody who wants to help uh expand this access.
Yeah, are you laughing because they're not all that receptive to it or are you?
Yeah, okay
Just because of course that's what we do.
(33:00):
Yeah, okay.
All right.
And there's a lot of different ways in which states are approaching it.
So sometimes it's the courts in Arizona, the court uh administrator and their team, aswell as the judiciary were involved in spearheading that.
In other places, it's being led by legal aid or the access to justice community.
(33:21):
So there's a real spread of diverse ways in which states are encountering this issue.
And then some states, it's just people who want to implement justice work in the program.
They're trying to figure out how to rally the troops around making that happen, which isanother way that it's sort of bubbling out from the bottom.
Yeah.
(33:42):
So, you you've got maybe a little bit of momentum uh this summer with these twoinitiatives from the courts and the ABA.
Are there kind of practical steps that you would recommend?
I don't know, states take, courts take, bars take uh toward moving ahead on these issues.
(34:04):
mean, you know, if somebody is involved in a state bar association or a state regulatorysystem or something, listening to this right now in their interest, how should they move
forward on this?
should they think about it?
I'll let Becky add to this, but related to my last point.
um You know, one is not to...
(34:25):
design them in such a way that they're destined to fail.
I mean, that's really part of what we see in the Triple LT program and some of these othermuch more constrained programs.
And so I would say first and foremost, don't design so many barriers to accessing theseprograms themselves, like credentialing requirements, like background checks, like all the
kinds of things that lawyers are wants to impute on any new program or regulation andinstead open them up and use evidence to tell you
(34:54):
whether or not these things are having an impact and how is they're causing any consumerharm.
So I think that's the inside of the Utah sandbox, right?
Which is we spur innovation by being evidence-based and focusing on consumer harm andmaking people report on what's happening.
And that's how we ensure that that doesn't happen.
(35:14):
Joe, back anything to add to that?
I think the other thing I would add is uh these things will happen as coalitions of peoplewho are mobilized around caring about a problem or a population.
And so who would who would be the best friends to help you if what you care about ishousing justice?
Work on that in your jurisdiction or if what you care about is an unhoused population,work on that in your jurisdiction.
(35:40):
Sort of thinking outside just your usual partners.
to back to Matthew's point about imagination.
Like who is it who's working on this and cares about this problem that I'm trying to solveand lead with that rather than with the solutions that we already have?
Because when you start with the problem and all of the people who have expertise andunderstanding about that problem, you get kind of incredible synergies and opportunities
(36:04):
to do things that might be different and more effective than what we do now.
So just being more open-minded, I think, about how to approach these things.
And for frontline justice, think that also means, you know, from the get go, it's anonpartisan um effort, right?
And so we have really diverse representation, our National Leadership Council, left,right, and center of people who care about this program, um as one example.
(36:30):
And then the other example is also partners that haven't traditionally been engaged inaccess to civil justice.
And so ARP, unions, other folks that
You know, both have expertise.
ARP has tens of thousands of older adults who help people with their taxes every year.
That's a fantastic model that's scaled um in incredible ways.
(36:50):
And then also just, you know, other kinds of stakeholders who already have networks andcoalitions of folks that they're serving, whether that be around, you know, sort of
economic issue, ex-public benefits or housing that haven't traditionally been at the tablein these conversations.
And that's been another big part of our strategy overall.
Yeah, I think I've commented in the past myself on this, it's always struck me that someof the greatest sparks for uh innovation in the access to justice area over the last
(37:21):
decade or so have come from the courts in a number of examples.
uh Even the Triple LT program, I think, came primarily from the Supreme Court inWashington, and obviously the Utah sandbox and the Arizona court has been innovative.
uh
Is that still the case?
mean, are courts still, do courts still have the potential to be, uh or should we still belooking to courts to be kind of leaders in this area and innovators in this area?
(37:53):
So what the lawyers tell me, I don't have a law degree, is that state supreme courts havethe inherent authority to regulate the practice of law.
So that seems like a good place to start.
But I think there are other, and I will bounce this ball to the person who is law trainedin just a second, but like there are other ways to use courts and the law to open up this
(38:14):
space um that are about bigger, more constitutional rights uh and not just the
should not just the local regulation of the legal profession.
And I think the answer is we don't really know.
And the exciting part about that is, as researchers, we can ask that question and are, infact, asking that question.
So we have a coalition of six researchers that are asking exactly that question, what arestate court leadership perceptions on authorized justice workers?
(38:42):
And over the next year, we'll be doing that research and reporting out on what we learn.
Yeah.
All right.
To go back to that, the idea of
The fact that, in a way, the premise of this article is that access to justice is criticalto democracy and that justice workers have the potential to be critical to enhancing
(39:05):
access to justice.
But you also talk in the article about the fact that we are in an unusual time right now,uh that a time when trust in government seems to be dramatically eroding uh people's trust
in...
institutions such as the courts is eroding.
(39:26):
Do you see justice workers as potentially having an impact on that or having the abilityto uh influence that in a positive way?
I think they can if those institutions become responsive as people engage with them more.
mean, part of the reason there's a declining trust in different parts of the government isit is declining in its functionality and in its trustworthiness.
(39:56):
I mean, part of the theory is that if people can have more access to engaging with theirown law,
not only can they solve their own problems more effectively, but they can start to holdtheir own institutions to account, hopefully more effectively.
And then they might become more trustworthy and effective and worthy of people's belief.
(40:18):
After reading that?
No, I would just say, you know, we are in this moment.
The trust in courts has been in decline for some time.
And it's also the case that people have been estranged from their own law for some time,not actually in the founding of this country, but as the bar has monopolized or enacted
(40:40):
protections over
know, decades.
I think that the opportunity here is not just about having more people in the world tohelp people with their problems, but it's also about having a conversation about what it
means to to know law and use law and shape law in ways that empower people in communitiesto be more both, I think, in conversation with each other, but also in conversation with
(41:03):
the law and the in the world that we want.
is a loaded question and maybe an unfair question, but the two of you are
know, obviously two of the leading researchers on access to justice issues in the UnitedStates, you've both been studying this area for a number of years.
(41:24):
How are we doing?
Are we making progress in closing the justice gap or are we backsliding?
Well, I mean, if you so one of the ways that we learn about this is through legal needssurveys, we call them where you serve, you have some representative sample of people and
you ask them about the issues that they're facing and then how did those issues resolve?
(41:47):
And the last one that was done by the Legal Services Corporation saw unmet legal needs gofrom 80 percent to 92 percent.
So that would suggest we're not making progress in that sense.
uh The state of California did a similar kind of analysis and found that despitesignificant more investment in legal aid, it also was serving less of the need than it was
(42:13):
before.
And that's one of the things I think that makes us think about how it's not just moreresources, which we obviously definitely need, but like new models of using those
resources that are more effective because we can't make the one we have big enough, Ithink.
I would say an exciting thing that's happening that we've been involved in uh is that yourDepartment of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics is fielding a civil legal needs
(42:42):
survey, which would be uh like the victimization and other government, uh officialgovernment data tracking that question over time.
And so one of the challenges about legal needs surveys, they're often ad hoc, differentinstitutions are doing them over time using different methodology.
So it's really hard to compare apples.
to apples.
So hopefully with an official survey that's administered regularly, we will actually havea better sense of the progress that we're making over time.
(43:10):
And I can't finish an interview without asking about AI only if only because you broughtit up, Matthew, with regard to the fact that it may be able to enhance the work of justice
workers.
But what is your take, Matthew on this whole question of whether generative AI is going tobe able to in some way be a tool to to
tackle the justice problem in this country?
(43:32):
Well, I take it back.
ah No, I think, you know, there's a lot of potential.
I've actually also been involved in technology, as you know, Bob, solutions to access orjustice for a couple of decades.
um I don't know that we've seen tremendous progress there.
um I hope that AI is different.
(43:53):
That's what they tell me.
But I think also that I am excited about this opportunity to link
uh advances in technology with community justice workers.
think giving more tools to folks who are uh in these roles where they're being trained tooften do a specific kind of thing, also just kind of expertise that can be developed over
(44:13):
time with some of these rag AI systems is promising.
And so I'm very excited about that.
I'm excited that AI can be a supplement to justice workers in really profound ways uh andget beyond a lot of the barriers that we see what to
technology, which have to do with technology literacy and broadband access and all thosehardware and other things that tend to be uh more pronounced, particularly among
(44:38):
low-income communities.
Well, we are just about out of time, but I wanted to kind of just give each of you anopportunity.
there's anything else you'd like to say about this that we haven't talked about.
Becky, how about you?
I think um to folks in the bar, think to recognize that we're all on the same team andwhat we want is a legal system that works for everybody and a democracy that works for
(45:02):
everybody.
And there's no one tool that's going to solve the problems that we face right now.
So let's work together to think about lots of different kinds of tools.
And I would also say to all of us, like, this is our democracy and we have to work it inorder for it to work.
And this is one tool for that to happen also.
And I welcome, I would be happy to partner with everybody who has good tools for doingthat.
(45:26):
All right.
Matthew, how about you?
I think that's perfect.
OK.
Plus one.
All right.
Well, I will make sure I include in the show notes links to both of your articles, the LawReview article and the Law 360 article recently, and to your other work.
(45:46):
And I really appreciate both of you.
I really appreciate all you do, and really appreciate your coming on the show to talkabout it.
So thank you very much.
Thank you so much for having us.
oh
having us.
All right, be well.
you
Thanks for listening to today's show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
(46:07):
you'd like to share your own thoughts, do so by messaging us on LinkedIn or other socialmedia, or just email me, ambroji at gmail.com.
If you're a fan of Law Next, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Law Next is a production of Law Next Media.
I'm your host, Bob Ambroji.
I hope you join us again next time for another episode of Law Next.
you
Today on Law Next, access to justice remains a persistent challenge.
The study is showing that as many as 120 million justice problems go unresolved everyyear.
Traditional approaches centered on lawyers and courts have failed to meet the scale ofneed, leaving millions of Americans unable to navigate basic legal issues like housing
(00:24):
disputes, wage theft, or family matters.
But what if we're going after this problem all wrong?
What if the solution isn't just about providing more legal services, but aboutfundamentally rethinking who can provide legal help and how that help is delivered?
Today, I'm joined by two leading researchers who argue that the access to justice crisisis actually a crisis of democracy and that the path forward lies in empowering everyday
(00:51):
community members to become justice workers.
Rebecca Sandefur is a professor at Arizona State University and faculty fellow at theAmerican Bar Foundation.
Matthew Burnett is director of research and programs for the Access to Justice ResearchInitiative at the American Bar Foundation and an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law.
(01:12):
Together, they co-founded Frontline Justice, a national project working to expandcommunity-based justice work.
And they've just published a provocative article in the South Carolina Law Review titled,Justice Work as Democracy Work, Reimagining Access to Justice as Democratization.
They argue that when people can't access their own law, democracy itself fails.
(01:36):
And they make the case that justice workers, community members trained to help theirneighbors with legal issues, represent a fundamental shift from the lawyer dominated
approach that has defined American legal services.
I'm Bob Ambrosio.
This is Law Next, the podcast that features the innovators and entrepreneurs who aredriving what's next in law.
(01:57):
Before we get to that conversation, please take a moment to hear from the sponsors who sogenerously support this podcast.
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Now let's get to today's conversation.
Rebecca, Matthew, welcome to Law Next.
(03:26):
Good to see you both.
Before we launch into the meat of what we want to talk about today, it's for anybodywatching, listening, who may not be familiar with you.
don't you kind of give me a little bit, the nutshell version of who you are and what youdo.
Rebecca, you want to kick it off?
Sure.
So I'm Rebecca Sandifer.
I'm a professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State Universityand a faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation.
(03:53):
I'm basically a sociologist, a researcher.
And with Matthew Burnett, I co-founded Frontline Justice, which is a national nonpartisanresearch-based project to give people access to their own law and strengthen democracy by
mobilizing a national movement of community justice workers.
And you are a return guest to this podcast.
were on this podcast back in June of 2020.
(04:14):
We were just talking before we hit the record button here on what an unusual time thatwas.
And here we are again talking in what is unfortunately an unusual time.
Matthew, what about you?
Hi, I'm Matthew Burnett.
I'm the director of research and programs for the access to justice research in the Shtibat the American Bar Foundation, which
(04:38):
Becky founded about 15 years ago.
I'm also a visiting scholar at ASU and I teach at Georgetown University Law Center whereI'm an adjunct professor.
So I know that I think the occasion in a sense for us to talk is perhaps a recent articlethat you've published in the South Carolina Law Review, is that what it was?
(04:59):
Entitled Justice Work as Democracy Work, Reimagining Access to Justice as Democratization.
And you talk in this article about
the concept of justice workers.
It's a topic we've talked about on this show a few times in the past.
I've had Nicole Nelson, who's the executive director of Frontline Justice, which two ofyou co-founded on this show in the past, to kind of talk about that.
(05:25):
uh But uh I wonder, what's really interesting, I think, about this article that you'vejust published is that
You are kind of reframing the conversation, I think, a little bit uh as maybe this is theway you've always talked about it.
But for me, it looks like a reframing of this idea of access to justice as really accessto democracy.
(05:48):
uh You want to kind of give us an introduction to what your thesis is here?
Becky, you want to kick it off?
I was looking to Matthew to kick.
Okay, Matthew, you want to kick it off.
Whichever.
can do a coin toss.
Yeah, I mean, I think that this has been a topic that's really been of interest andanimated a lot of our work on justice workers, which um has largely been focused on like,
(06:15):
how do you design these programs?
What do we know?
What's the evidence about how to make them effective and scalable and sustainable?
um But something I think that's been core to that has been ah why is this important beyondjust
people helping other people.
Like, why do we care about this as uh a core kind of approach to access to justice?
(06:37):
And that has a lot to do with things like justice workers are engaged in civicparticipation, justice workers are democratization of law and giving people their own law.
And I think also um in the moment that we're in, uh it's sort of uh an alternative to someof the
(06:57):
collapse or deconstruction of law, rule of law, and an opportunity for everyday people toparticipate in the justice system in new ways.
And so I think that's something we wanted to write about and did so in this article.
Becky, I'll let you add.
The only thing I would add is it has long struck me as really weird that law is a bigpublic thing that in a democracy is all of ours and yet so many people are shut out of it
(07:28):
in so many ways.
ah And so one of the things that I think is really exciting and hopeful about justiceworkers is that they're a way of opening that up, both because they can help people
connect when they have issues, but because they are themselves people, just regularpeople.
um engaging with the law in a more authoritative and effective way than has been the casein the past often, I think.
(07:53):
Well, they shut out.
also, you the point in the article, and I think this is something people involved in AssetJustice recognize, which is that a lot of A to J problems, I think you used the phrase,
are peripheral to the resolution of most, that the formal justice systems are peripheralto the resolution of most civil justice problems.
(08:14):
And you talk about the fact that most people do not recognize the justiciable problemsthat they face in life as having legal dimensions.
mean, it's almost...
You're almost basically saying that a lot of what we talk about as access to justiceproblems exist outside the traditional legal system as we think about it.
Yes, in part because, as you pointed out, I mean, if you ask someone, is your employer notpaying you overtime or are you not getting vacation that you're entitled to?
(08:45):
What kind of problem is that?
They'll say, well, the problem is my employer's a jerk.
Or, you know, this is really unfair.
But they won't say, well, it's wage theft, incite the statute or tell you what stateadministrative agencies should help them.
And so part of what's
hopeful about justice workers is they are people who have the knowledge to make thatconnection, to help people understand they have a problem they can hold an institution to
(09:09):
account about.
uh But they're already there.
So they're already your neighbor or the librarian or at your church or uh you don't haveto go through this process of identifying this problem and figuring out who would be
helpful because somebody else is already identifying and is already there being helpful.
(09:29):
So what are we talking about here?
How do you define what it means to be a justice worker?
What is a justice worker?
So I think there's a broader way to look at that, um which is um to just see the enormouswealth and expertise that exists in communities and to ensure that that um is available to
(09:53):
folks to help them with their ex-to-justice problems.
um
And I think there's a more narrow way, which is the way in which we begin to define itthrough regulation.
so Alaska has adopted, as I think Nicole and others have talked about on your podcast, aquite broad waiver that allows Alaska Legal Services, the statewide provider, to supervise
(10:16):
folks across Alaska.
And there are more than 200 now community justice workers in over 40 villages and citiesand towns, which is an exceptional kind of reach and potential
uh opportunity around particularly questions of rural access to justice.
know, other states have done other things.
So Arizona has a more narrow justice worker provision.
(10:37):
There are other states like South Carolina and Delaware and Hawaii that have specificprovisions for child custody and evictions and housing issues.
That definition will probably shift over time, but we hope that it will be broad andinclusive and ensure that it's actually supporting the work that needs to happen to meet
this enormous need, which
(10:58):
As we know from the LSE Justice Gap Survey, less than 10 % of low-income people get accessto meaningful or enough legal assistance.
Well, the other thing that happened, Rebecca, when you were on this show back in 2020, wewere talking, I think, just days or weeks after the Alaska, or rather the Washington State
(11:20):
Supreme Court had decided to sunset the limited license legal technician program there.
Is that?
Was that an example of a justice worker or is that a different kind of an initiative?
mean, does that fall within the purview of what you're talking about or how is thatdifferent?
So I think probably if you ask different people who are involved in this activity, theymight draw the lines differently.
(11:45):
So I'll just say the way I think about it.
Matthew may not be right on the same page.
uh But so justice workers are people who are authorized.
So they're allowed to do the thing.
And they're competent to do the thing.
uh But they're not necessarily going to be licensed.
So one of the problems with the Washington state program was
(12:08):
the licensing requirements were so burdensome.
It was really, really hard, like 3000 hours of supervised practice, two or three differentbar exams, malpractice insurance, which I believe at that time Washington state attorneys
did not have to carry.
And so just made it very hard for that program to grow.
And if you look at licensed paralegal programs around the country, they have been prettyslow to grow.
(12:31):
So Americans will have 150 million to 250 million new civil justice problems every year.
And I haven't looked at the last count of licensed independent paralegals.
So that would be people authorized through licensing for the limited practice of lawwithout the supervision of an attorney.
Right.
But I think it's what three or four hundred helping three hundred and forty millionAmericans.
(12:57):
just it doesn't scale fast enough.
And that was one of the reasons
that it was so vulnerable when various political actors didn't want it in the state ofWashington.
Right, right.
What's the argument for focusing on justice workers?
mean, what is it that justice workers can bring to this problem that lawyers alone can't,or some of the other uh legal services offices can't, some of the other more traditional
(13:23):
and established means of trying to address the access to justice problem?
Well, I'll start very sort of big picture, which is uh
just to address how weird it is that everyday people in this country, in a world that is,as Gillian Hadfield says, law-thick, right, who have to negotiate the law in order to make
a living, order to care for dependents, in order to do all the things they need to do,can't help one another with those problems.
(13:51):
That's not unique, but unusual among the things that we engage with and...
have to accommodate in our lives.
And so I think part of it is this democratization of access to justice is aboutrecognizing that, that that exclusion or sort of disconnect between people and their own
(14:14):
law, which they actually vote for legislatures to enact or legislators to enact.
You used the word in your article that lawyers have captured the legal system, which isa...
They're holding it hostage, I guess you're saying.
And it's a regulatory capture, but it's also, it chills democracy, right?
It captures the way in which people engage directly with democracy, which is through law.
(14:36):
ah So I think em that that's the kind of perspective that I would bring at the high level.
And then I think, Becky, I'll let you speak more to the ways in which we're thinking aboutthese programs in the world and their impact.
Well, I think maybe if, if I were to throw out three things that immediately come to mind,there's accessibility, there's representation and there's scalability.
(15:01):
these justice worker services are not expensive to the people who use them.
They're already present to the people who use them because they're distributed acrosscommunities.
Justice workers right now, Matthew could tell you the figures for Alaska for some, fromsome research he's leading there, but
They're much more diverse than the legal profession.
So they represent the experiences of our very diverse democracy much more effectively.
(15:26):
And they have the capacity to scale up much faster than lawyers can because that's sevenyears of school and $200,000 of educational debt and lots and lots of exams and so on.
It opens up the effervescence of what's possible in a way that we haven't seen, I think,in other projects giving people access.
(15:47):
If I remember right about Alaska, the justice worker program there, the justice workersare already expected to be or already serving in kind of community facing roles outside
their justice worker role.
I mean, they're working in social services agencies or community organizations orsomething like that.
Do I have that right?
Yeah, many of them are.
um So they're embedded in community based organizations that could be a tribal healthorganization or another kind of organization.
(16:09):
They're also just volunteers and neighbors of, you know, folks who who want to do justicework.
And so.
And then some of them, a few of them are on staff at the LSC and they serve that role andare funded obviously by LSC.
Yeah.
So you see, you you talk about the availability, the diversity, some of the other factorsthat seem to make sense in why justice workers would be valuable in enhancing access to
(16:36):
justice.
Do we have any kind of real evidence of their effectiveness to look at?
Is there any data?
there any empirical?
evidence that this kind of a program works?
Well, Becky can talk about the broader evidence base that's been developed over the lastcouple of decades.
In Alaska, I think really kind of profound uh evidence that's coming out of that program.
(17:01):
One is, as Becky said, about a third of the justice workers are Alaska Native.
So that actually over-represents the state in which about 20 % of the population is AlaskaNative.
about three times the representation on ALSC staff.
So it's real in terms of the diversity and the linguistic and cultural competency andexpertise that comes with that.
(17:23):
The other really interesting thing is the rural reach.
So we're seeing impact in communities that not only is there not a law office or a lawyer,but in many cases, the lawyers never step foot in those communities.
And so the idea that we're expanding reach to 40 communities is
as we face in this country, also rural access to justice.
think the crisis is really exciting.
(17:44):
And then I'd say the last thing um from Alaska is just the economic impact.
So we're seeing about a 1 to 25 return in the initial analysis of the case management dataover a few years.
And that's just phenomenal.
think LSC, um the kind of average return on investment is 1 to 7.
So that's over three time increase in that.
(18:06):
impact and that has a lot to do with the model itself.
um Obviously, if ALSC is not, if the legal service provider is not paying these folks, ifthey're paid by the community organization or if they're volunteers, then um that's going
to reduce costs.
I guess the other thing I'd say related to that is that we're seeing community justiceworkers grow in a way in Alaska that pro bono attorneys aren't.
(18:29):
And so you have a kind of flat line of participation among pro bono attorneys throughoutAlaska.
a nice kind of hockey stick curve of community justice workers as more and more peoplelearn about the program and get involved.
So that speaks directly to the question of scale and sustainability over time.
Because obviously there will be attrition there.
Some folks are going to decide that they don't want to do the work or uh they're doingother things.
(18:52):
And so to see that program growth over time is really unusual among existing access tojustice solutions.
Yeah, some other contexts where we see justice workers.
So the state of Utah, as many of your listeners know, has a regulatory sandbox for legalservices.
(19:12):
so entities that want to provide innovative legal services, which could include havingjustice workers provide services, uh can apply.
then the sandbox collects data about them.
And I think Lucy, Rika, and I looked at the data for this about a year ago.
was something like 14,000 to 16,000 services delivered by justice workers to Utah.
(19:33):
with no evidence of consumer harm and no complaints for those services.
So that's a good marker of competence.
And there are other jurisdictions that are not nearly as restrictive as the United Statesin terms of who can practice law.
One of the most prominent ones is probably England and Wales, where anybody can give legaladvice and there are a wide range of legal advice providers.
(19:56):
But also for many years until recent years,
fairly robust legal aid system that was like, it was called Judycare.
So just like Medicare, you get a voucher, you take it to a private lawyer, and then thatperson helps you with your divorce or your eviction or whatever.
And as part of trying to find a way to scale that back in our neoliberal times, theMinistry of Justice commissioned a study that compared the work product of non-lawyer
(20:23):
helpers to solicitors.
And it was a blind peer review study.
So the person who's assessing the work doesn't know whether it was done by a lawyer orsomeone who doesn't have a law license.
And they found that everybody makes mistakes, but about 80 % of the time, both people whoaren't attorneys but are trained and competent and people who are attorneys will do a
competent job.
But interestingly, the people who weren't attorneys were six times more likely to get A'son their assignments, right, to have their work rated as excellent.
(20:51):
uh And that...
probably has something to do with specialization.
So they're not trying to do everything.
They're trying to do one thing or a few things.
So there's good support for this idea that these programs and these folks can be really,really effective, especially when they're targeted to stuff that's really important.
So a lot of the Alaska justice work early was on SNAP benefits and uh incorrect SNAPdenials.
(21:15):
And in the early days, they had 100 % success rate.
But part of what you're hearing about that
monetary return, return on investment that Matthew's talking about is not only can I nowfeed myself and my family, I can spend that money in my community and that has collateral
and concatenating benefits.
And so thinking about where the work can be the most effective or the most impactful isalso a way of thinking about how this can help, right?
(21:41):
How we can help people solve their problems, but also help strengthen communities.
So I take it that what you just said about the evidence regarding the effectiveness ofthese workers also applies to the safety, if that's the right word, of these workers.
Because of course, one of the criticisms or objections we keep hearing from the organizedbar or some sectors of the organized bar anyway is that by authorizing non-lawyers, to use
(22:11):
the phrase, to deliver any kind of legal help,
you're endangering consumers in some way, you know, they may not get the quality of legalservices that they deserve to get.
It sounds like you're saying the evidence is otherwise.
Yeah, the evidence is strongly in favor of competence.
And in Utah's context, which is collecting complaint information, which is where you getethical violations, I suppose, if people recognize them.
(22:39):
We don't see any evidence of that there either.
you
From heard from Rebecca and Matthew, the justice workers can be effective, as has beenmost dramatically demonstrated in Alaska, where justice workers have expanded into more
than 40 rural communities.
We've also heard that trained non-lawyers often outperform attorneys on specific tasks.
(23:05):
But this movement has been gaining momentum in other ways as well.
When we return, we'll explore two major developments from this summer that signal apotential turning point for justice workers in America.
and we'll discuss the obstacles that still stand in the way of broader adoption.
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(24:48):
We're back to Law Next, where we've been discussing the Justice Worker Movement withRebecca Sandefur and Matthew Burnett, who argued that empowering community members to
provide legal help isn't just about access to justice, it's about strengthening democracyitself.
This summer, two notable developments occurred that could signal a turning point for theJustice Worker Movement in the U.S.
(25:08):
As a return, I asked Matthew to tell us about those developments.
We also, later in this half, talk about some of the obstacles that still need to beovercome and
Rebecca's and Matthew's thoughts on how to do that.
So both the Conference of Chief Justices and Court Administrators passed a resolutionsupporting the study and exploration of justice worker programs, uh as well as the ABA
(25:39):
House of Delegates just at the last meeting, Resolution 605.
So that's exciting.
I mean, it's exciting.
think our understanding is there's never been any resolution by the House of Delegatesthat's supported any type of non-lawyer.
So I think that's an exciting shift and certainly an awareness of both the extent of theaccess to justice crisis, but also this is a potential solution.
(26:02):
And what we write in that article is basically, this is great.
It's amazing that this happened in the world and there's this support, but both call forstudying justice workers.
And in order to study justice workers, turns out you need those programs to exist in theworld so that you have some empirical base to say things about them.
And so we make the case in that law, 360 article, that in order to really understand andempirically investigate these programs, we need more programs to exist in the world and
(26:32):
more authorization happening across states so that we can understand what is theireffectiveness, how do they scale, are they sustainable over time, and ask those really
critical questions.
So what progress has been made on that front?
I mean, we've talked a lot already just in this interview about Alaska and it colluded toArizona, Utah.
(26:54):
What's going on elsewhere in the country in terms of adoption of justice worker programs?
Well, so there are, I think, at least 20 states that are actively, and by what I meanactively is like people are actually working to try to think about what this could look
like and what would be appropriate for their state and what they might do.
Another thing that's happening is that frontline justice.
(27:15):
So if we want to scale stuff, it has to be, you have to enable scaling.
So one way to enable scaling is not to put up a bunch of barriers, but another way toenable scaling is to provide a bunch of supports.
And so one of those supports is,
training modules that can be rolled out and customized to specific jurisdictions fairlyeasily so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel each time.
(27:40):
And so Frontline Justices at work with a national coalition at developing some of thosearound those targeted areas that are really consequential for people's lives.
So you're seeing both supports for making it happen and space for making it happen openingup around the country, I think.
I don't know what you want to add, Matthew.
Well, just that Frontline Justice also has a really promising initiative on the use of AIin this context.
(28:04):
So how do we supercharge justice workers using generative AI and
sort of, you know, the cutting edge of technology and those supports.
um And then I think the last thing I would say is that, you know, there's, among all ofthis activity, um there's a number of groups who are thinking very sort of broadly about
(28:24):
how do we make sure this happens in the world.
There's another set of groups that are taking the position that, we just need a bunch ofpilots to figure this out.
And I think one of the things that
that we're really pushing for both within states and nationally is to think beyond thepilot.
The pilot's often the death knell of innovation and access to justice space.
(28:45):
So I think just getting folks to think bigger, right?
So that we're not creating these barriers or constraints on these programs.
We're allowing for true experimentation and obviously having reporting and datarequirements that ensure that there's not consumer harm and that these programs are having
an impact in the world.
Yeah.
(29:06):
You said that sort of the two parts of it are overcoming the obstacles and also providingthe lift from underneath, perhaps.
What are the biggest obstacles that remain at this point?
Is it primarily the UPL statutes in that whole structure?
Or what are some of the other ones that get in the way of the expansion of Justice Worker?
(29:28):
Uh, UPL seems to me like the biggest one.
Mm-hmm.
And it's supported by, mean, supported in part, like, why do we have these rules?
Because we want to protect consumers and make sure that they get competent services.
Well, if that's why we have these rules, let's think about the different ways in which wecould make that happen or the different ways we could deal with errors that people make,
(29:52):
like consumer protection law.
We don't license everything that people do, for example.
I think another part of UPL is it's, when the bar objects to it, it's often based on
myths.
So very poor and marginalized people are not a potential market for legal services at 250or $750 an hour.
(30:16):
The expansion of these programs wouldn't eat anybody's lunch.
think one of the things that so Tom Clark from the National Center of State Courts and Idid a study of the Washington Project, the limited license legal technicians when they
were still operative.
And one of the interesting things, lawyers didn't like them either, because they were
you know, junior lawyers.
(30:36):
One of the things that we found is that many of them worked in law firms.
And so they had their scope of practice, which did not include representation.
So they could connect with market segments that regular lawyers were too expensive for,but then they could unbundle to those lawyers representation.
So there was some limited evidence at that small scale that that opportunity expanded themarket that those law firms were participating in.
(31:04):
So I think helping the legal profession, which right now does control the practice of lawin most places, understand that this is not an economic threat, but rather a support to
our common goal of expanding people's access to their own law.
Any other barriers you see there, Matthew?
(31:24):
uh I'm sure there are others, but I mean, I would say the other barrier potentially isjust imagination, right?
I think we saw something really unique in Alaska, which was, we trust Alaska LegalServices as the statewide legal services provider, and we want to enable them with a rule
that they were, that they participated in creating to allow them to try things and tolearn from them.
(31:50):
And so I think
you know, just beyond the UPL stuff and, and, you know, the kind of the barriers that thatmight be more squarely around regulation.
There's a lot that's just about how programs are designed and implemented in the world.
And I think that it's exciting that that's where we are in the conversation, at least insome contexts now that we're not just fighting against uh the regulatory constraint, but
(32:14):
also thinking about how to best design and develop these programs.
Well, and Matthew, think you said earlier that that's one of the aspects that thatfrontline justice is working on is how to design and train for these programs.
Are you, meaning you frontline justice, actively working with, I don't know, courts,legislatures, bars, you know, other organizations that can be influential in this area to
(32:39):
try and generate these more of these programs?
Yes, we will support and work with anybody who wants to help uh expand this access.
Yeah, are you laughing because they're not all that receptive to it or are you?
Yeah, okay
Just because of course that's what we do.
(33:00):
Yeah, okay.
All right.
And there's a lot of different ways in which states are approaching it.
So sometimes it's the courts in Arizona, the court uh administrator and their team, aswell as the judiciary were involved in spearheading that.
In other places, it's being led by legal aid or the access to justice community.
(33:21):
So there's a real spread of diverse ways in which states are encountering this issue.
And then some states, it's just people who want to implement justice work in the program.
They're trying to figure out how to rally the troops around making that happen, which isanother way that it's sort of bubbling out from the bottom.
Yeah.
(33:42):
So, you you've got maybe a little bit of momentum uh this summer with these twoinitiatives from the courts and the ABA.
Are there kind of practical steps that you would recommend?
I don't know, states take, courts take, bars take uh toward moving ahead on these issues.
(34:04):
mean, you know, if somebody is involved in a state bar association or a state regulatorysystem or something, listening to this right now in their interest, how should they move
forward on this?
should they think about it?
I'll let Becky add to this, but related to my last point.
um You know, one is not to...
(34:25):
design them in such a way that they're destined to fail.
I mean, that's really part of what we see in the Triple LT program and some of these othermuch more constrained programs.
And so I would say first and foremost, don't design so many barriers to accessing theseprograms themselves, like credentialing requirements, like background checks, like all the
kinds of things that lawyers are wants to impute on any new program or regulation andinstead open them up and use evidence to tell you
(34:54):
whether or not these things are having an impact and how is they're causing any consumerharm.
So I think that's the inside of the Utah sandbox, right?
Which is we spur innovation by being evidence-based and focusing on consumer harm andmaking people report on what's happening.
And that's how we ensure that that doesn't happen.
(35:14):
Joe, back anything to add to that?
I think the other thing I would add is uh these things will happen as coalitions of peoplewho are mobilized around caring about a problem or a population.
And so who would who would be the best friends to help you if what you care about ishousing justice?
Work on that in your jurisdiction or if what you care about is an unhoused population,work on that in your jurisdiction.
(35:40):
Sort of thinking outside just your usual partners.
to back to Matthew's point about imagination.
Like who is it who's working on this and cares about this problem that I'm trying to solveand lead with that rather than with the solutions that we already have?
Because when you start with the problem and all of the people who have expertise andunderstanding about that problem, you get kind of incredible synergies and opportunities
(36:04):
to do things that might be different and more effective than what we do now.
So just being more open-minded, I think, about how to approach these things.
And for frontline justice, think that also means, you know, from the get go, it's anonpartisan um effort, right?
And so we have really diverse representation, our National Leadership Council, left,right, and center of people who care about this program, um as one example.
(36:30):
And then the other example is also partners that haven't traditionally been engaged inaccess to civil justice.
And so ARP, unions, other folks that
You know, both have expertise.
ARP has tens of thousands of older adults who help people with their taxes every year.
That's a fantastic model that's scaled um in incredible ways.
(36:50):
And then also just, you know, other kinds of stakeholders who already have networks andcoalitions of folks that they're serving, whether that be around, you know, sort of
economic issue, ex-public benefits or housing that haven't traditionally been at the tablein these conversations.
And that's been another big part of our strategy overall.
Yeah, I think I've commented in the past myself on this, it's always struck me that someof the greatest sparks for uh innovation in the access to justice area over the last
(37:21):
decade or so have come from the courts in a number of examples.
uh Even the Triple LT program, I think, came primarily from the Supreme Court inWashington, and obviously the Utah sandbox and the Arizona court has been innovative.
uh
Is that still the case?
mean, are courts still, do courts still have the potential to be, uh or should we still belooking to courts to be kind of leaders in this area and innovators in this area?
(37:53):
So what the lawyers tell me, I don't have a law degree, is that state supreme courts havethe inherent authority to regulate the practice of law.
So that seems like a good place to start.
But I think there are other, and I will bounce this ball to the person who is law trainedin just a second, but like there are other ways to use courts and the law to open up this
(38:14):
space um that are about bigger, more constitutional rights uh and not just the
should not just the local regulation of the legal profession.
And I think the answer is we don't really know.
And the exciting part about that is, as researchers, we can ask that question and are, infact, asking that question.
So we have a coalition of six researchers that are asking exactly that question, what arestate court leadership perceptions on authorized justice workers?
(38:42):
And over the next year, we'll be doing that research and reporting out on what we learn.
Yeah.
All right.
To go back to that, the idea of
The fact that, in a way, the premise of this article is that access to justice is criticalto democracy and that justice workers have the potential to be critical to enhancing
(39:05):
access to justice.
But you also talk in the article about the fact that we are in an unusual time right now,uh that a time when trust in government seems to be dramatically eroding uh people's trust
in...
institutions such as the courts is eroding.
(39:26):
Do you see justice workers as potentially having an impact on that or having the abilityto uh influence that in a positive way?
I think they can if those institutions become responsive as people engage with them more.
mean, part of the reason there's a declining trust in different parts of the government isit is declining in its functionality and in its trustworthiness.
(39:56):
I mean, part of the theory is that if people can have more access to engaging with theirown law,
not only can they solve their own problems more effectively, but they can start to holdtheir own institutions to account, hopefully more effectively.
And then they might become more trustworthy and effective and worthy of people's belief.
(40:18):
After reading that?
No, I would just say, you know, we are in this moment.
The trust in courts has been in decline for some time.
And it's also the case that people have been estranged from their own law for some time,not actually in the founding of this country, but as the bar has monopolized or enacted
(40:40):
protections over
know, decades.
I think that the opportunity here is not just about having more people in the world tohelp people with their problems, but it's also about having a conversation about what it
means to to know law and use law and shape law in ways that empower people in communitiesto be more both, I think, in conversation with each other, but also in conversation with
(41:03):
the law and the in the world that we want.
is a loaded question and maybe an unfair question, but the two of you are
know, obviously two of the leading researchers on access to justice issues in the UnitedStates, you've both been studying this area for a number of years.
(41:24):
How are we doing?
Are we making progress in closing the justice gap or are we backsliding?
Well, I mean, if you so one of the ways that we learn about this is through legal needssurveys, we call them where you serve, you have some representative sample of people and
you ask them about the issues that they're facing and then how did those issues resolve?
(41:47):
And the last one that was done by the Legal Services Corporation saw unmet legal needs gofrom 80 percent to 92 percent.
So that would suggest we're not making progress in that sense.
uh The state of California did a similar kind of analysis and found that despitesignificant more investment in legal aid, it also was serving less of the need than it was
(42:13):
before.
And that's one of the things I think that makes us think about how it's not just moreresources, which we obviously definitely need, but like new models of using those
resources that are more effective because we can't make the one we have big enough, Ithink.
I would say an exciting thing that's happening that we've been involved in uh is that yourDepartment of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics is fielding a civil legal needs
(42:42):
survey, which would be uh like the victimization and other government, uh officialgovernment data tracking that question over time.
And so one of the challenges about legal needs surveys, they're often ad hoc, differentinstitutions are doing them over time using different methodology.
So it's really hard to compare apples.
to apples.
So hopefully with an official survey that's administered regularly, we will actually havea better sense of the progress that we're making over time.
(43:10):
And I can't finish an interview without asking about AI only if only because you broughtit up, Matthew, with regard to the fact that it may be able to enhance the work of justice
workers.
But what is your take, Matthew on this whole question of whether generative AI is going tobe able to in some way be a tool to to
tackle the justice problem in this country?
(43:32):
Well, I take it back.
ah No, I think, you know, there's a lot of potential.
I've actually also been involved in technology, as you know, Bob, solutions to access orjustice for a couple of decades.
um I don't know that we've seen tremendous progress there.
um I hope that AI is different.
(43:53):
That's what they tell me.
But I think also that I am excited about this opportunity to link
uh advances in technology with community justice workers.
think giving more tools to folks who are uh in these roles where they're being trained tooften do a specific kind of thing, also just kind of expertise that can be developed over
(44:13):
time with some of these rag AI systems is promising.
And so I'm very excited about that.
I'm excited that AI can be a supplement to justice workers in really profound ways uh andget beyond a lot of the barriers that we see what to
technology, which have to do with technology literacy and broadband access and all thosehardware and other things that tend to be uh more pronounced, particularly among
(44:38):
low-income communities.
Well, we are just about out of time, but I wanted to kind of just give each of you anopportunity.
there's anything else you'd like to say about this that we haven't talked about.
Becky, how about you?
I think um to folks in the bar, think to recognize that we're all on the same team andwhat we want is a legal system that works for everybody and a democracy that works for
(45:02):
everybody.
And there's no one tool that's going to solve the problems that we face right now.
So let's work together to think about lots of different kinds of tools.
And I would also say to all of us, like, this is our democracy and we have to work it inorder for it to work.
And this is one tool for that to happen also.
And I welcome, I would be happy to partner with everybody who has good tools for doingthat.
(45:26):
All right.
Matthew, how about you?
I think that's perfect.
OK.
Plus one.
All right.
Well, I will make sure I include in the show notes links to both of your articles, the LawReview article and the Law 360 article recently, and to your other work.
(45:46):
And I really appreciate both of you.
I really appreciate all you do, and really appreciate your coming on the show to talkabout it.
So thank you very much.
Thank you so much for having us.
oh
having us.
All right, be well.
you
Thanks for listening to today's show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
(46:07):
you'd like to share your own thoughts, do so by messaging us on LinkedIn or other socialmedia, or just email me, ambroji at gmail.com.
If you're a fan of Law Next, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Law Next is a production of Law Next Media.
I'm your host, Bob Ambroji.
I hope you join us again next time for another episode of Law Next.
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