Access to Justice: We Can Do Better

by Chase Hertel

If you are part of the legal profession, you are likely familiar with the phrase “access to justice.” As legal professionals, we have all grown accustomed to using this phrase to describe, in my opinion, one of our nation’s largest and persistent failures: Millions of people in the United States of America lack access to adequate legal help for their basic civil legal needs. I believe the phrase access to justice is inadequate, not because I don’t believe in it as a call for action, but because the word justice doesn’t align with what those who lack access are actually searching for — legal services. However, I am not the first to raise the idea of re-branding this crisis. While in law school at Michigan State University College of Law, I was fortunate to hear Dan Lear advocate for this very change. For reasons I still cannot fully explain, his thoughts on this issue lit a fire under me I’ve not been able to put out since.

So, here I am…

I have a suspicion that I won’t be the first lawyer to tell you that words matter. Lawyers love words, and because of their love of words all legal professionals are keenly aware that how you talk about a problem matters a great deal. This is a lesson I have tried to learn and often must re-learn repeatedly as a young lawyer and legal technologist. I labor over word choice constantly, and I have no doubt other lawyers and legal professionals do too. Which begs the question:

Why are we, as legal professionals, using a word like “justice” to describe the utter lack of access to legal services in this country?

Families looking for help dealing with an eviction are not looking for justice. Financially stressed consumers desperately in need of help dealing with a debt-collector are not searching for justice. Partners looking to amicably end their marriage and coparent children are not searching for justice. I believe that this word choice is part of the problem because it is not inclusive of available solutions. Justice is often thought of as something only lawyers and judges can deliver. It is adversarial in nature, lawyer centric, and screams lawyers or nothing! It means access to lawyers and judges, and not access to legal information and services, unless of course, it is delivered by lawyers and judges. Access to legal services does not mean access to lawyers. And non-profit legal aid organizations and for-profit professional service providers alike are coming around to the idea that the future of professional services is a combination of technology-driven experiences, augmented by access to professional advice.

Consider for example, Rentervention — a web-based tech tool designed to help Chicago area tenants deal with housing issues. It is a great combination of technology and professional services. The technology side of this effort is a chatbot called “Renny.” Chicago area tenants searching for legal information or assistance can chat with Renny about their situation or read materials on the website to learn more about their housing rights. Renny, essentially a guided Q&A, delivers information to tenants based on the questions they answer. At the beginning of a chat session tenants are qualified for service by ensuring they are Chicago area residents and subject to protections afforded to them by the Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance. At the end of the session, Renny directs users to tech tools designed to help them draft correspondence, such as a demand letter, and/or connect with legal aid or volunteer attorneys.

Additionally, consider Illinois Legal Aid Online (“ILAO”). Often thought of as one of the leading digital-forward legal aid organizations in the country and a trailblazer in the field for over 20 years, ILAO’s website is a one-stop shop for Illinois residents searching for legal information, legal forms and/or a connection to free legal help. As a testament to their reliability and depth of content, for attorneys looking to start their own legal research on the right foot, ILAO offers Illinois-specific lawyer practice manuals and other resources. Full disclosure, I have the pleasure of serving on ILAO’s Young Professionals Board, so it should come as no surprise I am a big fan of the organization. With that in mind I’ll let some objective statistics displayed on their website and from their most recent annual report speak to ILAO’s impact:

• Over 3 million people will use ILAO’s website and tools this year to help with crises such as unemployment, food insecurity, abuse, eviction, deportation, divorce and debt.
• 100,000 people visit ILAO’s website every month from 5:00 pm to 9:00 am, when traditional legal services are closed. ILAO is the only legal aid service in Illinois where people can get free legal aid 24/7/365.
• In 2021, ILAO helped nearly 80,000 people understand Illinois’ rental assistance programs and connected over 15,000 tenants and landlords to the state’s application portal.

Finally, consider LIFT Wisconsin. According to their website, “The mission of LIFT Wisconsin is to provide efficient, technology driven legal assistance to clear civil legal barriers to economic prosperity for Wisconsin families, to transform legal and courts systems to prevent economic drags, and to contribute to reform movements to improve access to civil legal justice.” Through LIFT Wisconsin’s technology-enabled tools, Wisconsinites in Dane, Sauk, Columbia, Marquette, Dodge, and Jefferson counties can identify and clear civil legal problems on their own or with the help of trusted professionals. The tools are available on mobile and desktop and leverage publicly available data to assist users in completing legal processes connected to driver’s licenses, eviction records, criminal records, and other background information. This type of assistance is sorely needed and helps Wisconsinites obtain better outcomes related to employment, housing, and mobility.

This is just a sample of what the legal tech community is doing to increase access to legal services. As more efforts like these launch across the country, I am confident legal professionals enabled by regulatory and other practice reforms will continue to develop innovative ways of delivering legal services involving a larger cast of community stakeholders and other allied professionals. The future of legal aid and law practice is technology-enabled, accessible, and inclusive.

Chase Hertel is a principal on LegalZoom’s attorney services team. Prior to this role, Chase was the deputy director and counsel of the American Bar Association Center for Innovation. Passionate about scaling access to legal services, Chase is dedicated to empowering lawyers and clients to work together through technology. Chase is a member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council and the Maryland Bar.