Evidence-Based Access to Justice

Abstract

An evidence-based approach is notably absent from the many efforts to expand access to the justice system for civil litigants, and there is no generally accepted metric for evaluating which access to justice tool works when. This article proposes the use of controlled, randomized experiments to evaluate whether a particular access to justice intervention leads to the same rate of wins and losses as full and competent attorney representation. It also describes a second metric for assessing the fairness of proceedings in which a particular access to justice intervention is used: whether the intervention provides litigants with the ability to adequately perform all tasks they would need to perform to enable the judge to reach a fair and accurate decision.

Keywords: access to justice, evidence based, research methods, legal representation, legal services, court, judicial process

JEL Classification: H1, H2, H4, H5, H7, I3, I32, K00