In half of U.S. households, at least one person faces a civil justice
problem each year. These problems range from eviction to divorce, benefits
denials to neighbor disputes, and medical debt to employment discrimination.
Most will never reach a court or a lawyer. Indeed, most will never be solved
at all. Unresolved civil legal problems cause financial instability, housing
insecurity, and poor mental and physical health—burdens disproportionately
borne by Black, Latinx, multiracial, and low-income Americans.
Although we know a great deal about the existence and distribution of
civil justice problems, we know less about how to solve them. Doing so
requires empirical research about help-seeking: where people go for
assistance, why they pursue some resources but avoid others, and whether
and how race and class shape patterns of help-seeking. We need solutions that
align with everyday people’s lived experiences.
This Article investigates help-seeking from the perspective of ordinary
people. Its findings can better equip lawyers, justice innovators, and program
designers to create novel access to justice solutions from the perspective of
everyday people. Leveraging data from a nationally representative survey,
this Article analyzes over 47,000 quantitative responses and 100,000 words
of open-ended answers, unearthing powerful findings about how Americans
think about getting help when they face a complex, early-stage problem with
legal implications.
People gravitate towards sources they view as experienced and private,
and those which offer advice, not information—a crucial distinction in light
of legal regulatory regimes. They gravitate away from sources they view as
bureaucratic, uncaring, or too extreme; these perceptions hinge on source
type. Identities such as political affiliation and religiosity are crucial
predictors of help-seeking behavior, denoting a need for diversified outreach
strategies to polarized groups.
By focusing on help-seeking for early-stage problems, this Article shifts
the conversation from the existence of legal needs to laying the empirical
groundwork for interventions that center the perspective of ordinary Americans. Doing so will better equip us to forge tools that can stop the
corrosive effects of unsolved civil legal problems.
