State Bar of Wisconsin

Access to Justice Study Committee

This Committee was appointed by President Guerin to prepare a legal needs study that would provide policy makers with better information about the scope and impact of the problem of access to justice in Wisconsin along with recommendations about how all of the stakeholders in the justice system could work together to do a better job of funding services. Low and moderate income Wisconsin households will be the focus of the study.

• Overview
• Committee Charge

News & Updates

• Final Report: Bridging the Justice Gap: Wisconsin's Unmet Legal Needs (adopted by the Board of Governors May 2007)

Committee Resources

• Access to Justice Support Project: The National Legal Aid & Defender Association library of civil legal needs studies and access to justice resources.
• Bellow-Sacks Report: "Civil Legal Assistance for all Americans," by Jeanne Charn and Richard Zorza from the Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project at Harvard Law School,  300 KB
• Circuit Court Statistics: The Wisconsin court system provides some basic data on the primary trial courts..
• Access to Justice: A wonderful book by Prof. Deborah Rhode at Stanford Law School on the state of the justice system for those who can't afford lawyers.
• Paths to Justice: Documents the results of groundbreaking research on how, when and why individuals access the justice system in the U.K.