America's Civil Courts: Whom Do We Serve?

Every year in America, tens of millions of people find themselves in court, without a lawyer, lost in a system built for lawyers.

The  Justice for All Project  has called on  Access to Justice Commissions  and coalitions around the country to develop consumer-oriented, comprehensive strategic plans. These plans will support 100% access to effective assistance for essential civil legal needs through court simplification and offering a continuum of services to include information, advice and appropriate levels of representation.

Consumer-oriented solutions require a deep and accurate understanding of the people being served. Each county is different, with unique communities of people, needs, resources and service networks. 

This Story Map showcases publicly available data to help inform service design and identify collaborative opportunities that best meet the needs of individual counties. Counties can range in population from 88 to nearly 500,000 people. This should be taken into consideration when exploring this aggregated data. Future research and evaluation may necessitate the use of Census tract (optimally 4,000 people), block group (600-3,000 people) and block data (determined by physical and cultural features).

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