This article presents an overview of civil legal aid and three reforms to improve delivery of services: 1) comprehensive triage system; 2) using business process improvements; and 3) creating legal information exchange organizations.
National
The Social, Geographic, and Organizational Determinants of Access to Civil Legal Aid Services: An Argument for an Integrated Access to Justice Model
This article proposes an accessibility model that matches supply and demand for civil legal services spatially.
Optimizing the Health Impacts of Civil Legal Aid Interventions: The Public Health Framework of Medical-Legal Partnerships
This article shows how medical-legal partnerships, a healthcare delivery model, can address the social determinants of health — how one’s social conditions (like neighborhood, job, and access to resources) affect health.
Medical-Legal Partnership and Healthy Start: Integrating Civil Legal Aid Services into Public Health Advocacy
This article looks at the medical-legal partnership model and how it can improve health outcomes by addressing the underlying social determinants of health.
Documenting the Justice Gap In America: The Current Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans (2009)
This report updates and expands LSC’s 2005 report “Documenting the Justice Gap in America: The Current Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans”. This report, completed in September 2009, shows that a continuing, major justice gap exists in our nation: for every person helped by LSC-funded legal aid programs, another is turned away. This report adds data on self-represented litigants.
Accessing Justice in Contemporary America: The Community Needs and Services Survey
This is the first study to pair an investigation of the civil justice problems people experience with an investigation of the legal and non-legal resources available to assist them in handling those problems.
A More Detailed Look at Legal Services by Older Americans Act Funded Providers
Among states with sufficient data to form a full sample, this study reports the distribution percentages representing the needs of the people using the legal assistance offered under the Older Americans Act.
Making the Case for Medical-Legal Partnerships: A Review of the Evidence
This covers 49 published articles written between 1977 – 2012 available on the MEDLINE, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. Researchers also scanned the Center’s “Academic Articles” page.
Examining the Real Demand for Legal Services
This study asks whether affordability is the actual reason why low and moderate income households frequently do not seek representation when facing a legal problem. The study finds that whether legal advice was sought depended heavily upon the nature of the problem.
Pro Se Phenomenon
The article reviews the causes of the increase in pro se litigation in the US. Inability to pay is only one of many reasons a litigant will end up going to court pro se. The current state of legal services in the US is failing the people who need help the most. Most clients receive only advice on how to proceed on their own.
Legal Aid Research 