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For millions of Americans, especially those living in poverty, hardship can take many forms: food and housing instability, unemployment, wage theft, burdensome debt, interrupted healthcare. Some are the results of unlawful practices. Others can be the result of simple mistakes, oversights, and omissions—the challenges of navigating large bureaucracies or of filling out complicated and unfamiliar forms.

Underlying these problems are legal rights and protections that are often difficult to exercise. These rights may be out of sight for anyone who does not have legal knowledge or access to lawyers. These problems are shaped by the law: they may raise civil legal issues, have consequences shaped by civil law, and may become the object of formal legal action. Yet all too often, the Americans who most need legal assistance do not receive it. Americans do not think their issues are legal or even consider law as a solution. Many who do seek help cannot afford a lawyer or, despite being eligible, are denied free legal services because of resource and capacity constraints.

The result is the civil justice gap: the great distance between the number of Americans who need civil legal assistance and the very few who receive help of any kind.

Most civil justice problems are handled by people on their own, or with advice from family and friends. The most common reason people give for not turning to lawyers is not the cost of lawyers’ help. There is a much more important reason: people do not consider law as a solution for their justice problems; they do not think of their problems as being “legal,” even when the legal system could help solve them.

Excerpted from "Access to What?" by Rebecca L. Sandefur. Originally published in the Daedalus volume Access to Justice, 2019.

The civil justice gap reinforces inequalities in our society. At-risk populations—by income, race, gender, and education level—cannot receive justice if they cannot access basic legal advice. The outcomes—evictions, family separations, job loss, and other hardships—are often catastrophic.

Despite the severity of its consequences, the civil justice gap remains nearly invisible, ignored, in part, because it is so complicated to solve. As shorthand, we often refer to the courts, lawyers, and others who help administer civil justice as a “civil justice system” but there is no one civil justice system. Instead, many uncoordinated institutions, organizations, and efforts are distributed unequally around the United States. These groups, which include underfunded and overworked legal aid programs in every state, work to help the least fortunate. While they can succeed against great odds, access to legal services—the very basis of equal justice in America—should not be a matter of geography, timing, or luck. Equal justice is a right, not a privilege.

 To learn more about the Civil Justice Gap, read the full executive summary, Access to Civil Justice for All Should Be an Urgent Priority.