to lawyer or not to lawyer: is that the question?

To Lawyer or Not to Lawyer: Is thatthe Question?Herbert M. Kritzer*

A central aspect of much of the debate over access to justice is the cost oflegal services. The presumption of most participants in the debate is thatindividuals of limited or modest means do not obtain legal assistancebecause they cannot afford the cost of that assistance. The question Iconsider in this article is whether income is a major factor in the decision toobtain the assistance of a qualified legal professional. Drawing on data fromseven different countries (the United States, England and Wales, Canada,Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Japan), I examine the rela-tionship between income and using a legal professional. The results areremarkably consistent across the seven countries: income has relatively littlerelationship with the decision to use a legal professional to deal with adispute or other legal need. The decision to use a lawyer appears to be muchmore a function of the nature of the dispute. Even those who could affordto retain a lawyer frequently make the decision to forego that assistance,usually at about the same rate as those with limited resources. The analysissuggests that those considering access to justice issues need to grapple withthe more general issues of how those with legal needs, regardless of theresources they have available, evaluate the costs and benefits of hiring alawyer.

*Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law; Professor of Political Science and LawEmeritus, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 875 Summit Ave., Saint Paul, MN 55105; email:[email protected].

Data and tabulations used in preparing this article were generously made available by Mas-ayuki Murayama (Meiji University), Pascoe Pleasance (Legal Services Research Center,London), ab Currie (Department of Justice Canada), Marijke ter Voert (Dutch Ministry ofJustice), and Marie Cope (New Zealand Legal Services Agency). The author has sole responsi-bility for the presentation and interpretation of all data reported and discussed in this article.Versions of the article were presented at the 2007 W. G. Hart Workshop, Institute for AdvancedLegal Studies, London, England, June 2007, the Annual Meeting of the Law and SocietyAssociation, Berlin, Germany, July 2008, and at the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, NewYork University, November 2007.

Journal of Empirical Legal StudiesVolume 5, Issue 4, 875–906, December 2008

© 2008, Copyright the AuthorJournal compilation © 2008, Cornell Law School and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

875

mailto:[email protected]

I. Introduction

One of the first steps in looking at access to justice is asking whetheraggrieved persons seek redress. Starting with the legal needs studies of the1970s (Curran 1977), we now have an extensive literature on the likelihoodof grievants taking action (Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compen-sation for Personal Injury 1978; Miller & Sarat 1980–1981; FitzGerald 1983;Harris et al. 1984; Bogart & Vidmar 1990; Kritzer et al. 1991a, 1991c; Hensleret al. 1991; Ewick & Silbey 1998; Genn 1999; Genn & Paterson 2001; Currie2006; Legal Services Agency 2006; Coumarelos et al. 2006; Murayama 2007).1

The thrust of these studies is that surprisingly few people in fact do seekredress, even in the supposedly litigious United States (see Abel 1987).2

The obvious question is: Why? A recurrent concern in the access tojustice literature is that it reflects the unaffordability of legal assistance. Thatis, a significant part of the access to justice problem is access to lawyers orother forms of legal advice and assistance (Cappelletti & Garth 1978; Bogartet al. 2005). In the United States, where government-funded legal aid isminimal, many states have undertaken studies and developed policies tohelp meet the legal needs of low- and moderate-income households.3 Theorganized legal profession in the United States has sought to address thisissue internally through the mechanism of pro bono legal services (Rhode2005; Cummings 2004). All this assumes that a central aspect of the decisionto obtain redress is the possession of the financial resources to pay for legalassistance (or, in the alternative, the availability of legal aid in some form).

Is the assumption that the lack of financial resources is a major, orpossibly the major, reason grievants fail to seek or obtain redress correct?There is some evidence that financial resources may have some influence.The 1993 American Bar Association study of the legal needs of low- and

1There are also studies and reports in Germany (Hommerich & Kilian 2007) and the Nether-lands (Van Velthoven & ter Voert 2004).

2This seems to be particularly true in the area of medical negligence (see Baker 2005:22–44;Sloan & Hsieh 1995), an area where Americans are regularly charged with being excessivelylitigious, resulting in skyrocketing medical malpractice premiums.

3States that have undertaken such studies include Connecticut (2003), District of Columbia(2003), Illinois (2005), Indiana (1992), Massachusetts (2003), Montana (2005), New Jersey(2002), North Carolina (2003), Oregon (2000), Tennessee (2004), Vermont (2001), Washing-ton (2003), and Wisconsin (2007). A list of the reports produced by each of these studies can befound in the Appendix.

876 Kritzer

moderate-income households found that moderate-income householdswere more likely to obtain the assistance of a lawyer to deal with their legalneeds than were low-income households (American Bar Association1994:27). Note that this study, along with many of the more recent state-based studies in the United States, did not include in its comparison higher-income households, reflecting the implicit assumption that higher-incomehouseholds can afford and will obtain the legal assistance they need. Thesestudies never consider the possibility that income and resources might notbe the driving force in seeking redress and/or obtaining legal assistance.

However, there is an early study that calls into question the assumptionthat income is a major influence on the decision to seek legal assistance.Mayhew and Reiss (1969), drawing on the 1967 Detroit Area Study, provideevidence that the major factor in decisions to seek legal assistance is thesocial context of the problem. That is, it is the type of problem not thecharacteristics of the person having the problem that is the major predictorof lawyer seeking.4 Figure 1 draws on results reported by Mayhew and Reissto illustrate this pattern.5

The central question I address in the analysis that follows is whether theresults of the Mayhew and Reiss study, now more than 40 years old and froma single city, represent a general pattern that holds true over time and acrossa wide variety of settings. That is, to what degree can we generalize Mayhewand Reiss’s argument that it is the social organization of problems ratherthan the characteristics of the persons having the problem that is the primarypredictor of the use of lawyers to deal with legal problems and other legalneeds?

II. Propensity to Claim

As noted above, there is now an extensive cross-national literature on thepropensity to claim. One striking aspect of that literature is that it consis-

4In addition to income, Mayhew and Reiss considered social status (blue collar vs. white collar),education, home ownership, age, and religion.

5Another report based on the same 1967 Detroit Area Study found that higher-income house-holds were more likely to consult a lawyer for a “serious” dispute (Silberman 1985:55, 103);however, even among the highest-income group, only about 16 percent saw a lawyer (comparedto about 6 percent for the lowest-income group). Moreover, this analysis did not specificallycontrol for type of problem.

To Lawyer or Not to Lawyer: Is that the Question? 877

tently shows that demographic factors, including income, have at best a verysmall influence on the likelihood that a grievant will seek redress. Forexample, Miller and Sarat (1980–1981:552) found that a model containingbackground variables (including income, education, and ethnicity) andseveral measures of previous legal experience reduced predictive error byonly 2.5 percent. The variable that best explains decisions to seek redress isthe specific nature of the problem; when Miller and Sarat added type ofproblem to their model, the reduction in predictive error rose to 24 percent.Further analyses of the Miller and Sarat data looking within the broadcategory of torts and injury found that income had no effect on claiming,although this is not surprising given the contingency fee system in theUnited States Kritzer et al. 1991a:523; replicating this analysis with data

Figure 1: Lawyer use, 1967 Detroit Area Study.

L dl d t t

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Buying/selling/building a house

Making a will

Settling an estate

Advice on businessmatters

Insurance claims

Divorce/alimony/child support

Contract disagreements

Tax problems/disputes with officials

Traffic tickets

Neighborhood

Accused of crime/disturbance

Domestic-family

Employer/employeedispute

Landlord-tenant

All $15,000 or more $7,000-$14,999 Under $7,000

Source: Mayhew & Reiss (1969).

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from a similar survey in Ontario, found a relationship with income but it wasby no means linear (1991a:527).6

The importance of problem type as a predictor of disputing behavior isillustrated by Figure 2, which shows disputing behavior in the United States(Miller & Sarat 1980–1981; Kritzer et al., 1991a, 1991c), Canada (Bogart &Vidmar 1990), Australia (FitzGerald 1983), and Japan (Murayama 2007).Although the figure shows only broad categories of dispute types, additionalanalyses that subdivide major dispute types, such as torts/injuries, consumer,and discrimination, into subtypes show that even within dispute types, thespecific subtype is the best single predictor of claiming and that demographicfactors including income have at best marginal effects (Kritzer et al., 1991b).

Figure 2 shows that relatively few people choose to use a lawyer (withthe possible exception of torts and injuries); however, the figure reveals

6A recent legal needs study conducted in New South Wales, Australia, found no income effect,after controlling for a variety of factors, including type of “event,” on whether any action wastaken to resolve the issue (Coumarelos et al. 2006:319).

Figure 2: Grievant behavior in four countries.

Japan US Australia Canada

Torts

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Japan U.S. Australia Canada

Consumer

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Japan US Australia Canada

Landlord/Tenant

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Japan U,S. Australia

Landlord/Tenant

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Japan U.S. Australia Canada

Government/Insurance/Tax

Grievances Claims Disputes Lawyer Court

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Japan Australia

Neighbors

Note: A dispute exists when a person with a grievance asserts a claim (a request for redress) andthat claim is not immediately satisfied. For sources, see discussion in text.


nothing about whether household income accounts for lawyer use. I nowturn to a wide variety of studies from seven different countries to explorewhether income is a significant factor in the decision to employ a lawyer.

III. Data Sources

My analysis does not employ any new data collection; rather, I rely on avariety of extant studies to examine the relationship between income andlawyer use. In this section, I briefly describe the various studies I use, countryby country.

A. United States

I draw on three different national studies to look at the decision to use alawyer in the United States. The first of these studies is the American BarFoundation’s (ABF) study of legal needs conducted in 1973–1974 (Curran1977). This study surveyed 2,064 households about a range of legal needs,both those involving disputes and those involving transactional matters(property acquisition, wills, etc.). In the discussion that follows, I will refer tothis as the “ABF Study.”

The second U.S. study is the 1993 American Bar Association study ofthe legal needs of low- and moderate-income households (American BarAssociation 1994). This study, which focused on experience in 1992, wasbased on a telephone survey of 1,525 households falling into the category oflow income (up to 125 percent of the federal poverty level) and 1,299households with moderate incomes (above the 125 percent low-incomethreshold but below $60,000).7 As with the earlier ABF Study, this studyincluded both disputes and transactional matters. I will refer to this study asthe “ABA Study.”

The third U.S. study is the survey conducted as part of the Civil Litiga-tion Research Project (CLRP) in 1980 (Miller & Sarat 1980–1981). Itincluded 5,147 households, approximately 1,000 in each of five federaljudicial districts around the United States (Eastern Pennsylvania, EasternWisconsin, Central California, South Carolina, and New Mexico). The focus

7Only the top income quintile was excluded from the study. Hawaii and Alaska were notincluded in the study. The telephone survey was supplemented by a small survey of householdswithout telephones.

880 Kritzer

in this survey was to locate disputes involving at least $1,000 (or somesignificant intangible issue) that the respondent had been involved in duringthe previous three years; it did not include divorce issues except for prob-lems that arose after a divorce had been finalized. I will refer to this study asthe “CLRP Study.”

B. Australia

The data for Australia come from a survey conducted by Jeffrey FitzGerald in1981–1982 in Victoria State (FitzGerald 1983). This study, designed as areplication of the CLRP Study, involved 1,019 households and again focusedon problems meeting a minimum threshold (AU$1,000). I will refer to thisstudy as the “Australia Study.”

C. Canada

The data for Canada come from two studies. The first is a survey conductedby W. A. Bogart and Neil Vidmar (Bogart & Vidmar 1990) in Ontario in1988. It was also designed as a replication of the CLRP Study, involved 3,024households, and focused on problems meeting a minimum threshold(CN$1,000) during a three-year window. I will refer to this study as the“Ontario Dispute Study.”

The second Canadian study was conducted by the Canadian Depart-ment of Justice in early 2006 (see Currie 2007), and is similar to a studyconducted in 2004.8 The survey was conducted by telephone. Questionscovered 76 specific types of problems during a three-year period that were“serious and difficult to resolve.” The study was modeled on the research byHazel Genn in her Paths to Justice studies (see Section III.D). There were atotal of 6,665 respondents. I will refer to this study as the “Canadian LegalNeeds Study.”

D. England and Wales

The study I use for England and Wales was conducted in 2004 by the LegalServices Research Center (Pleasance et al. 2006).9 The design of this study

8The 2004 survey focused on individuals with incomes under $35,000 and families with incomesunder $50,000; there were no income limitations for the 2006 survey.

9Pascoe Pleasance, the director of the Legal Services Research Center, generously provided mewith the tabulations that form the basis of what I report below for the LSRC Study.


was based on Hazel Genn’s earlier Paths to Justice studies, one in England andWales (Genn 1999) and a second done collaboratively with Alan Paterson inScotland (Genn & Paterson 2001). The data for the “LSRC Study” (as I willcall it) come from 5,015 households and focus on what the study labeled“justiciable problems” rather than setting a threshold, as in the CLRP, Aus-tralia, and Ontario studies.10

E. Japan

The study I use for Japan is an ongoing project in that country headed up byMasayuki Murayama (2007). This study is modeled in many ways on theCLRP study of 25 years ago but was also influenced by Genn’s more recentPaths to Justice Studies. The Disputing Behaviour Survey from which I drawwas carried out in March 2005 and produced responses from 12,408 indi-viduals (a response rate of almost 50 percent). The Disputing BehaviorSurvey did not set any threshold level for the problems it asked about. A totalof 2,343 respondents reported a total of 4,144 problems during the previousfive years.11 I will refer to this study as the “Japan Study.”

F. The Netherlands

The study from the Netherlands was conducted by the Research and Docu-mentation Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Justice (Van Velthoven & terVoert 2004). It took the form of a survey conducted via the Internet, andclosely followed the model of Genn’s Paths to Justice studies. In a screeningsurvey, individuals aged 18 or over were asked whether they had experiencedproblems of various sorts during the five-year period from January 1998 untilDecember 2002. A list of 66 different types of problems, organized into 10main categories, was presented to the respondents followed by three “catchall” questions asking whether respondents, apart from anything already

10Genn defines a “justiciable event” as “a matter experienced by a respondent which raised legalissues, whether or not it was recognized by the respondent as being ‘legal’ and whether or notany action taken by the respondent to deal with the event involved the use of any part of the civiljustice system” (Genn 1999:12). Events that were perceived by the respondents as trivial wereexcluded, with a trivial event being defined as one where the respondent took “no actionwhatsoever to deal with the problem because the problem had not been regarded as importantenough to warrant any action” (1999:13).

11A total of 12,408 respondents were interviewed; 18.9 percent (2,343) reported one or moreproblems (Murayama 2007:6).

882 Kritzer

reported, had had legal action taken against them, had been threatened withlegal action, or had considered initiating court proceedings themselves forany reason. Respondents were deemed eligible for the main survey if theyhad experienced at least one nontrivial (defined as “difficult” and of suffi-cient importance to merit action by the respondent) justiciable problem thathad begun during the five-year period reviewed in the study. In the follow-upsurvey, respondents were asked in detail about the way they handled onespecific problem.

In the first two months of 2003, 4,250 persons were asked to participatein the screening survey. They returned 3,516 questionnaires (response rate83 percent). A total of 2,299 respondents were classified as eligible for themain interview and 1,911 completed the follow-up survey (response rate 83percent). The screening sample of 3,516 respondents was assessed to berepresentative of the Dutch population with respect to age, gender, andeducational level. I will refer to this as the “Dutch Study.”

G. New Zealand

In June and July 2006, the New Zealand Legal Services Agency (2006)conducted a nationwide survey on access to legal services and the extent ofunmet legal needs. The survey was conducted by telephone using a randomsample stratified by region and with oversamples of Maori and Pacific Islandpeople. The total sample size was 7,200. The survey asked about seven broadtypes of problems: employment, welfare benefits (which in New Zealandincludes no-fault payments by the Accident Compensation Corporation),housing, money and debt, consumer, immigration, and family and relation-ship breakdown. Although there was no formal threshold for inclusion, thesurvey employed “threshold language” when posing questions to respon-dents, emphasizing phrases such as “problems that were difficult to resolve”and “most serious” as a means of encouraging respondents to filter out trivialproblems, which technically may have a legal aspect but do not warrantpursuing a legal resolution. The survey used a 12-month window. I will referto it as the “New Zealand Study.”

H. Additional Sources

One other source that I will employ is an unpublished report of an analysisof the data from the Australia Study and the CLRP Study (FitzGerald &Miller n.d.). That report presents the results of a logistic regression analysesof the likelihood that disputants would employ lawyers. The logistic regres-


sion model included income as a variable as well as problem type and avariety of other variables.

IV. Analysis

My analytic strategy is to look separately at each study comparing lawyer usefor different problem types controlling for income. The thrust of the resultsI show below is that, after controlling for problem type, there is little in theway of a pattern or relationship between income and the use of a lawyer todeal with a given problem. This is not to say that there are no significantdifferences in the likelihood of using a lawyer; rather, where there aresignificant differences they do not show a consistently increasing monotonicrelationship with income.

A. The United States

1. ABF Study

The ABF Study (Curran 1977) still stands as the most comprehensive legalneeds study conducted nationally in the United States. Unlike the later ABAStudy, the ABF study included all income groups. In the aggregate, the studyfound little difference in mean income between those who did and did notemploy a lawyer to assist with their legal needs: $10,600 for those who usedlawyers and $10,200 for those who did not (Curran 1977:152). Of course, theaggregate may hide important differences because the nature of problemsmay vary with income, and the type of problem may affect lawyer use. Curranalso reports mean income for lawyer users and nonusers for each of ninedifferent types of problems (1977:153, Fig 4.32). I reproduce those patternsin Figure 3 (supplemented with some additional detail for three other typesof problems found in Curran’s text). The figure does not suggest a clearpattern of higher income leading to an increased likelihood of employing alawyer to assist with a legal need.

Figure 4, which draws on results reported in Curran (1977:154–57),shows the likelihood of employing a lawyer to deal with 12 different types oflegal needs controlling for income. Income here is divided into quintiles,which is useful because the next study I will consider omitted from its designthe highest income quintile. If income were a driving force in the decision toemploy a lawyer, one would expect the highest-income group to stand out asmore likely to employ a lawyer. Of the 12 types of legal needs shown in

884 Kritzer

Figure 4, in only three (federal agency problems, municipal service prob-lems, and property acquisition) is the highest quintile the most likely toemploy a lawyer.12 It is worth noting that the lowest quintile was the mostlikely to employ a lawyer in two of the 12 types of legal needs (although inone of those, the lowest quintile was tied with the second quintile) and thatthe lowest quintile was the least likely to employ a lawyer in four types ofneeds (although it was tied with at least one other quintile in two of thefour). Thus, it is difficult to discern any consistent pattern in the relationshipbetween family income and the use of a lawyer in the ABF Study.

However, this does not mean that there is no pattern worth noting inFigure 4. The pattern that is apparent is the same one identified by Mayhewand Reiss in their analysis of the Detroit Area Study: the likelihood of usinga lawyer is tied strongly to the type of problem, although the clarity of this

12Using the binomial distribution, there is over a 20 percent chance that one of the five incomecategories would be the most likely to employ a lawyer in three or more of the 12 comparisons.

Figure 3: Income and lawyer use, ABF Legal Needs Study (1973).

$0

$2,000

$4,000

$6,000

$8,000

$10,000

$12,000

$14,000

$16,000

used a lawyer did not use a lawyer

Source: Curran (1977).


pattern is clearer for some types of problems than others. For example, forinjuries to the respondent’s child, property damage, bodily injury, consumercomplaints, and credit problems, there is relatively little variation by income,but there is substantial variation among the types of need. There is more

Figure 4: Lawyer use, ABF Legal Needs Study (1973).

Property damage

Municipal services

Credit problem

State agency

Federal agency

Consumer complaint

Bodily injury

Injury to respondent's child

Property dispute

Claim against respondent

Divorce-males

Property acquisition

Local agency

Bodily injury

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Divorce-females

Highest Quintile

Fourth Quintile

Second Quintile Third Quintile

First Quintile

Source: Curran (1977).

886 Kritzer

variation within the types of government problems, although some of thisreflects small samples.

2. ABA Study

One study that does seem to show a pattern of lawyer use related to incomeis the ABA Study of the 1990s. That study reports that in 21 percent ofcases involving low-income households, lawyer assistance/involvement wasobtained, compared to 28 percent of moderate-income households (Ameri-can Bar Association 1994:27). Figure 5 shows the involvement of lawyerby income group and type of problem. For six of eight comparisons,moderate-income households were more likely to obtain legal assistancethan were low-income households. For only one type of problem (personalor economic injury) were low-income households more likely to obtain theinvolvement of a lawyer; for one type of problem, employment related,there was no difference between the two income groups. Importantly, these

Figure 5: Lawyer use, ABA Legal Needs Study (1993).

Personal finance/consumer

Employment-related

Health/health care

Community/regional

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Wills/estates/advance directives

Family/domestic

Personal/economicinjury

Housing/real property

consumer

Moderate Income Low Income

Source: American Bar Association (1994).


latter two types of problems are the kinds of problems where lawyers aremost likely to be hired on a no-win, no-pay basis, which means that theresources of the client play at best a small role in the availability of legalassistance.13

However, while Figure 5 does show a relatively consistent pattern of agreater likelihood of lawyer involvement for moderate-income householdscompared to low-income households, the figure again shows the dominantinfluence of type of problem on the use of lawyers. The largest gaps betweenmodest and low income are for family/domestic problems and for will/estates/advanced directives.14 For these types of problems, the likelihood ofa low-income household using a lawyer is greater than the likelihood of amoderate-income household using a lawyer for any of the other six catego-ries of legal needs. Thus, as with the earlier ABF Study and the Detroit AreaStudy, type of problem is a greater factor in the involvement of lawyers thanis household income.

3. CLRP Study

The CLRP (Civil Litigation Research Project) Study is the third U.S. study. Itwas undertaken not to measure “legal needs” but, instead, to identify house-holds that had experienced a “middle-range” dispute during the previousthree years. The focus was on problems where the parties had a choice ofwhether to involve a court; consequently, divorce cases were excluded,although postdivorce disputes were included. As noted previously, “middle-range” disputes were defined to be those involving at least $1,000 (in thencurrent dollars) or some significant nonmonetary issue (e.g., child custody).Figure 6 shows the pattern of lawyer use for eight types of grievances (i.e.,problems the respondent blamed on someone else). Income was roughlydivided by quartile. For three of the eight types of grievances shown, thehighest income quartile was the most likely to use a lawyer; in four of theeight, the lowest income quartile was least likely to use a lawyer. Thus, therewould appear to be at least some relationship with income. However, themost striking aspect of Figure 6 is that, again, the dominant factor in lawyer

13Resources may correlate with the amount of a potential recovery, and this may impact lawyers’decisions about whether to take a case on a no-win, no-pay basis (see Kritzer 2004:84–86).

14The differences in the probability of using a lawyer are statistically significant for these twotypes of needs; the difference for housing/real property is also significant, and the differencefor community/regional problems is significant if one assumes a directional hypothesis.

888 Kritzer

use appears to be type of problem. Income is at best operating at themargin.15

B. Australia

As noted previously, the Australia Study was modeled after the CLRPStudy. Figure 7 shows lawyer use for seven different types of grievances. As

15One way to further see the importance of problem type is to subdivide the types of problemsinto finer categories. I did this for tort/injury problems in the CLRP data set, creating threesubgroups: auto, work, and other. Overall, lawyer use was 24 percent for auto, 19 percent forwork, and 13 percent for other. Controlling for income produced some groups with very small

Figure 6: Lawyer use in the United States: Civil Litigation Project (1980).

Discrimination

Money/credit/debt

Consumer

Government

Tort/injury

Property

Landlord

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Postdivorce

j y

All over $30,000 $20,001-$30,000

$13,001-$20,000 $13,000 or less

Source: Author’s analysis of the CLRP data.


the figure shows, for only one type of problem (discrimination) is thehighest quartile the most likely to turn to a lawyer, and for only one is thelowest quartile the least likely (although for two other types of problems

samples (ns are shown in parentheses) but the results are interesting, and confirm that incomedoes not seem to be a differentiating factor.

$13,000 or Less $13,001–$20,000 $20,001–$30,000 Over $30,000 All

Auto 29% (79) 26% (68) 24% (93) 19% (91) 24% (264)Work 32% (31) 17% (31) 8% (24) 14% (14) 19% (103)Other 13% (15) 14% (22) 15% (20) 10% (20) 13% (82)

Figure 7: Lawyer use in Australia: Australia Disputes Study (1981–1982).

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Property

Torts/injury

Government

Discrimination

Consumer

Neighbor

Landlord

All $30,000 or more $20,000 -$29,999

$15,000 -$19,999 $10,000 -$14,999 Under $10,000

Source: Author’s analysis of FitzGerald’s data.

890 Kritzer

no one in the first income quartile and at least one other quartile used alawyer).16

C. Canada

1. Ontario Dispute Study

The Ontario Dispute Study, done in 1988, was also modeled on the CLRPStudy’s household survey. Figure 8 shows the pattern of lawyer contact for

16The sample size of the Australian Study makes subdividing problem types as I did with theCLRP study problematic. Lawyer use for car accident problems (24 percent overall) andwork-related injuries (13 percent overall) was, if anything, inversely related to income; for othertypes of injuries, virtually no one used a lawyer.

Figure 8: Lawyer use in Ontario: Ontario Dispute Study (1988).

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Divorce

Debted owed to

Tort

Tenant

Consumer

Debt owed

Government

Discrimimination

All $65,000 or more $45,000-$64,999

$25,000-$44,999 Under $25,000

Source: Author’s analysis of Bogart and Vidmar’s data.


eight types of grievances.17 The same basic pattern is apparent here as in theprevious studies. In four of seven categories of problems, the highest incomequartile was the most likely to contact a lawyer, and in three of sevencategories, the lowest quartile was least likely. However, the dominantpattern is the influence of type of problem. The one clear exception is thecategory of “debt owed to” the respondent, where the highest income quar-tile was much more likely to contact a lawyer.18

2. Canadian Legal Needs Study

The 2006 Canadian Legal Needs Study provides a more detailed breakout ofproblem types, as shown in Figure 9. For some types of problems, income hasa positive relationship with consulting a lawyer (the higher the income, themore likely a lawyer was consulted); in other problems the relationship wasinverse (lower-income respondents were more likely to consult a lawyer).Overall, there is no clear relationship between lawyer use and income, andproblem type provides a much more consistent predictor.

D. Japan

As noted earlier, the Japan Study was also influenced by the design of theCivil Litigation Research Project study and by Genn’s Paths to Justice studies.The household survey for the Japan Study asked about a range of problems.It distinguished between “consulting a lawyer” and “hiring a lawyer.” Fig-ures 10 and 11 show the patterns, respectively, for these two types of actions.I have labeled the income categories as “low,” “low-middle,” “high-middle,”and “high” because the categories used in the survey do not combine to formapproximate quartiles.19

Essentially, the same type of pattern emerges yet again. There is atendency of the highest-income group to be the most likely to consult or hire

17Among those seeking redress, lawyers were contacted in 28.4 percent of grievances (slightlymore than half before the claim was made); of those not seeking redress from the opposingparty, only 13.7 percent contacted a lawyer.

18The Ontario Dispute Study allowed the division of injury problems into four groups (percentusing lawyers shown in parentheses): auto personal injury (59 percent), auto property damage(13 percent), work (15 percent), and other (28 percent). There was no clear relationship withincome.

19The categories were defined as under ¥4,000,000 (low), ¥4,000,000 to ¥5,999,999 (low-middle), ¥6,000,000 to ¥8,999,999 (high-middle), and ¥9,000,000 or more (high).

892 Kritzer

Figure 9: Lawyer use in Canada: Canadian Legal Needs Study (2006).

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Relationshipbreakdown

Other familyproblems

Threat oflegal action

Wills andpowers

Police action

Housing

Disabilitybenefit

Immigration

Personalinjury

Socialassistance

Debt

Employment

Consumer

Discrimination

Hospitaltreatment

All $85,000 or more $65,000 - $84,999

$45,000 - $64,999 $25,000 - $44,999 <$25,000

Source: Tabulations provided to the author by ab. Currie, Department of Justice Canada.


a lawyer, and perhaps a pattern of the lowest-income group being the leastlikely. However, the income pattern is clearly overwhelmed by the patterndefined by problem type. Family/relative problems are most likely to involvelawyers more or less regardless of income, followed by money/credit prob-lems. In contrast, accidents, goods/services, and employment problems areunlikely to involve lawyers, regardless of income.

E. England and Wales

Given that the LSRC Study in England and Wales was modeled on HazelGenn’s work on Paths to Justice, it falls somewhere between the legal needs

Figure 10: Consulting lawyers: Japan Disputing Behaviour Study (2005).

Family/relative

Money/credit

Land/house

Rent/lease

Neighbors

Publicauthority

Accidents

Goods/service

Employment

Privateinsurance

all high hi-middle low-middle low

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Source: Tabulations provided to the author by Masayuki Murayama.

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studies and the dispute-oriented approach employed by the Civil LitigationResearch Project. The focus is on “justiciable problems” rather than on“grievances,” “disputes,” or “legal needs.” A justiciable problem is a situationthat raises legal issues regardless of whether it is recognized by the personexperiencing it as legal and regardless of whether any action involving anyuse of the civil justice system is taken to deal with the situation. Problemswhere no action was taken to deal with the situation because the respondentregarded it not important enough to warrant any action are excluded.

Figure 12 shows the likelihood of consulting a solicitor for 10 types ofjusticiable problems; income is broken into three categories: low, less than£10,000; medium, £10,000–£49,999; and high, £50,000 or more. As thefigure shows, for two of the 10 problem types, tort and family/divorce, there

Figure 11: Hiring lawyers: Japan Disputing Behaviour Study (2005).

0% 20% 40% 60%

Family/relative

Money/credit

Land/house

Rent/lease

Neighbors

Publicauthority

Accidents

Goods/service

Employment

Privateinsurance

all high hi-middle low-middle low

Source: Tabulations provided to the author by Masayuki Murayama.


is substantial variation by income; however, for both these categories, it is thelow-income group that is most likely to consult a solicitor. There is variationin some of the other types of problems, but for those, less than 20 percent ofany group consulted a solicitor. There are three types of problems for whichthe high-income group was most likely to consult a solicitor, but for all three,the high-income group was only a couple percentage points more likely tohave seen a solicitor than was the middle-income group. Most important, aswith the other studies, it is the type of problem that seems to be the strongerfactor in accounting for contacting a solicitor.

F. New Zealand

The patterns of lawyer use found by the New Zealand study are shown inFigure 13. There are no surprises here. In fact, for only one problem type—

Figure 12: LSRC Study, England and Wales, consulting a solicitor for ajusticiable problem (2005).

Discrimination

Money/debt

Landlord/

tenant

Consumer

Neighbor

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Family/

divorce

Tort

Property

Employment

Government

All £50,000 or more £10,000-£49,999 Under £10,000

Source: Tabulations provided to the author by Pascoe Pleasance, Legal Services ResearchCenter.

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consumer problems—is the highest-income group the most likely to use alawyer. In fact, it is difficult to see any systematic pattern of relationshipbetween income and lawyer use in Figure 13.

G. The Netherlands

The final study for which I have data is the Dutch survey conducted via theInternet in 2002. The pattern of lawyer use controlling for problem type andincome is shown in Figure 14. For five of the 10 problem types shown in thefigure, the lowest-income group was the most likely to consult a lawyer; foronly two problem types was the highest-income group the most likely toconsult a lawyer and for one of those, it was only very slightly more likely thanthe lowest-income group.

Figure 13: New Zealand Legal Needs Study (2006).

Welfare oraccident benefit

Employment

Money or debt

Consumer

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Family

Immigration

Housing or land

Other

all over $70,000 $40,001-$70,000

$20,001-$40,000 up to $20,000

Source: Author’s analysis of data provided by the New Zealand Legal Services Agency.


H. Multivariate Analysis

The patterns described above are sufficiently consistent that relatively littlewould be added by undertaking multivariate analyses with additional controlvariables. Nonetheless, it is worth considering one such analysis that wasdone using the data from the CLRP Study and the Australia Study. Thisanalysis appears in an unpublished paper by Jeffrey FitzGerald and RichardE. Miller (n.d.). The analysis predicted lawyer use by disputants, includingproblem type, family income, characteristics of the head of the household(education, age, occupation, gender, and ethnicity), legal resources andexperience (personal contacts with a lawyer or legal official, prior lawyer use,and previous experience as a plaintiff or defendant in a lawsuit), whether the

Figure 14: Justiciable problems in the Netherlands (2003).

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Family

problems

Property

ownership

Employment

Money

problems

Renting out

property

Renting property

(tenant)

Children-related

problems

Health-related

problems

Faulty goods

Other

problems

All €56,000 or more €34,000-€55,999

€23,000-€33,999 <€23,000

Source: Tabulations provided to the author by Dr. Marijke ter Voert, Dutch Ministry of Justice.

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other side employed a lawyer, whether the disputant had resorted to a thirdparty, whether the claim is monetary or nonmonetary and, if monetary, theamount at stake, whether the opposing party is an individual or an organi-zation, and whether the respondent knew or had prior contact with theopposing party. FitzGerald and Miller reported the results of their analysis inthe form of predicted probabilities, where those probabilities were obtainedby varying the value of one variable while the other variables were held attheir mean values.20

Figure 15 shows how the estimated percentages of respondents whoused a lawyer varies depending on type of problem, amount at stake (formonetary claims), and family income.21 The figure shows strong effects for

20The ns for the two logistic regressions are 821 and 334 for the United States and Australia,respectively; the respective reductions in predictive error are 22.5 percent and 39.0 percent.

21The actual predicted percentage of Australians using lawyers for postdivorce matters wasapproximately 100 percent; to avoid distorting the graphs, I limited the maximum percentagefor all three graphs to 60 percent.

Figure 15: Multivariate analysis of lawyer use in the United States and Aus-tralia (predicted percentage of disputants using a lawyer).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

U.S. Australia

Problem Type Effect

Discrimination Government

Consumer Property

Landlord Tort

Postdivorce

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

U.S. Australia

Stakes Effect

$1,000-$2,500

$5,000-$7,500

Over $10,000

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

U.S. Australia

Income Effect

Less than $10,000

$10,000 - $20,000

$20,000 - $30,000

Over $30,000

Source: FitzGerald and Miller (n.d.).


stakes and for type of problem. It shows no pattern of increasing use of lawyersdependent on the disputant’s family income. In fact, family income does nothave any statistically significant effect on the use of lawyers in this analysis.

V. Discussion

The patterns presented above are remarkably consistent: income has rela-tively little impact on decisions to seek the assistance or advice of a lawyer.Although income may play some role in such decisions, that role is very smallcompared to the type (and size) of the matter at issue. The small role ofincome seems in many ways counterintuitive. Except for matters handled ona no-win, no-pay basis, or for persons and matters qualifying for legal assis-tance, the cost of legal assistance is likely to be significant, and it seemslogical that a person’s resources would play a major role in the decision toget that assistance. Why do people choose not to obtain legal assistance, evenwhen they could afford to do so?

The ABA Study did ask the respondents, all of whom resided in low- ormoderate-income households, why they did not seek help from the legal/judicial system, which included seeking the assistance from a lawyer. Only 16percent of low-income respondents and only 8 percent of moderate-incomerespondents cited cost concerns. Many more, 30 percent of low-incomerespondents and 33 percent of moderate-income respondents, thought thatit would not help or that the issue was “not really a problem” (American BarAssociation 1994:26). Bogart and Vidmar asked a similar question in theOntario Dispute Study to those who did not contact a lawyer and found only17 percent said “a lawyer would cost too much”; 25 percent felt that contact-ing a lawyer was inappropriate; 26 percent that it would do no good or theproblem was not important enough; and 19 percent said that they preferredto handle the problem themselves (Bogart & Vidmar 1990:33). This is not tosay that people do not think about the cost of legal assistance, particularlywhen prompted to the issue, or that concerns about those costs do not affectdecisions to seek assistance (see Genn 1999:80–82; Genn & Paterson2001:98–100). Still, when asked for reasons for inaction on legal problems,the cost of legal assistance does not stand out as a dominant factor, and isoften far down on the list of what was taken into account (see Pleasance et al.2004:52; Coumarelos et al. 2006:94; Abel-Smith et al. 1973:187).

Reflected in the response pattern above is a kind of cost-benefit calcu-lation that turns on an assessment of the likely benefit a lawyer would

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provide. Such calculations are not limited to low- and moderate-incomehouseholds. This was clearly illustrated in a tax appeal case I observed duringan earlier research project (Kritzer 1998:87–88). The case involved a pilot fora major airline who was appealing a decision of the Wisconsin Department ofRevenue to disallow a deduction related to a speculative gold mine in whichhe had invested. The hearing was a very confused affair because of thetaxpayer’s decision to appear without legal counsel. Clearly, this wassomeone who was in the top 10 percent income bracket and who could haveafforded to hire a lawyer but made a decision not to. In fact, before thehearing started, the taxpayer commented to the tax commissioner who wasto hear the appeal that he had not brought an attorney because “I believethat the attorney costs in the matter would probably exceed the amount thedepartment claims I owe.”22

Even if people with adequate resources are making cost-benefit calcu-lations that lead them not to hire a lawyer to assist with a legal need, thatreflects a choice they are in a position to make. A person with limited meansdoes not have that luxury. However, does that prevent a person of limitedmeans from hiring a lawyer if the person believes that a lawyer would providea significant benefit? The answer to this question may be less apparent thanmany would assume.

A study in Denver, Colorado compared the sentence outcomesobtained in felony criminal cases by public defenders and by privatelyretained defense counsel for cases filed during calendar year 2002. The studyfound that clients of public defenders experienced worse outcomes than didthe clients of privately retained counsel, even after controlling for nature ofthe offense. The authors speculate that this may reflect decisions of“marginally-indigent” defendants rather than the effectiveness of the lawyer.

If you are a marginally-indigent defendant, and you know not only that you areguilty but that there is a very high probability that you will be convicted (forexample, your crime was captured on videotape), it is not unreasonable toimagine that you will be less inclined to scrape together the money for privatecounsel than if, for example, you know you are wrongly accused.

22The amount at issue was $9,000 plus interest, which put it beyond the tax commission’s “smallclaim” procedure. Normally, the tax commissioner would not rule orally on cases that are notsmall claims, but he offered to do so in this case if the two parties consented; the parties didconsent, and the commissioner ruled against the taxpayer. The taxpayer’s presentation of hiscase was extremely confusing; it is possible that an experienced tax attorney could have pre-sented the case in a way that would have been successful, but that is pure speculation on my part.


The authors suggest that the difference between the outcomesachieved by public defenders and privately retained lawyers may result fromthe clients of the public defenders having, on average, worse cases (Hoffmanet al. 2005:230). In fact, the authors’ analysis shows that 41 percent ofdefendants facing serious charges (“class 1” or “class 2” felonies) managed toretain private counsel compared to 28 percent for all felony defendants(2005:239–40, percentages computed by the author); there is no reason toassume that those facing serious charges had greater financial means thanthose facing lesser charges.

My analysis has not focused on criminal cases. However, the studydescribed above suggests that when thinking about decisions of individualsto pay to hire a lawyer, one must consider those individuals’ assessment ofthe seriousness of the issue and the likely benefit that a lawyer mightproduce. There may be many justiciable problems where a rational actor willcome to the conclusion that the potential benefit is not worth the cost oflegal counsel.

From the viewpoint of understanding issues related to access to justice,this takes us to the question of what baseline should be used in assessing“unmet legal needs.” The standard approach has been to determine whatlegal problems low- and moderate-income households have experienced,and then to label that proportion where legal assistance was not obtained as“unmet legal needs.” Researchers and policymakers fail to ask the question ofwhether someone with adequate financial resources would choose to expendthose resources to hire a lawyer to assist with the legal problems that areidentified. In fact, recent studies in the United States have excluded from thestudy households in some higher-income bracket (often the top quintile).23

By excluding higher-income households, one cannot determine whetherthose households make similar or different decisions about hiring legalcounsel when they confront legal problems. If the likelihood that suchhouseholds would hire a lawyer differs little from what low- and moderate-income households do in similar situations, it raises the question of whetherthe absence of such assistance truly represents an “unmet legal need” thatshould be addressed through some form of legal aid or pro bono program.Whether the consumer’s decision is rational or irrational is something thatneeds to be addressed. In the end, we may need to ask the difficult questionsof whether employing a lawyer would have made a meaningful difference in

23This is true of the state-level studies listed in the Appendix.

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dealing with the legal problem or legal need, and even if a lawyer would havemade at least some difference, whether that difference is sufficient to justifythe cost, regardless of who bears the cost, of those legal services.

Let me be clear. I am not arguing that there is not a significant problemof unmet legal needs. What I am arguing is that assessing unmet legal needsis a much more complex issue than most prior efforts in this regard havetaken into account. There is an issue of rationing, and most prior efforts haveignored the evidence of how market rationing has long operated with regardto the employment of legal professionals by individuals who have law-relatedproblems. I am also not arguing that all legal problems should be examinedwith an eye to market rationing. The recent writing under the rubric of aneed for a “civil Gideon” (e.g., Clearinghouse Review July–August 2006; see, inparticular, Engler 2006) typically concerns the nature and severity of theproblems that might be subject to a civil Gideon, with a focus on justiciableproblems that have a significant likelihood of major, life-altering conse-quences such as termination of parental rights (see Boyer 2005).24

References

Abel, Richard L. (1987) “The Real Tort Crisis—Too Few Claims,” 48 Ohio State Law J.443.

Abel-Smith, Brian, Michael Zander, & Rosalind Brooke (1973) Legal Problems and theCitizen: A Study in Three London Boroughs. London: Heinemann.

American Bar Association (1990) Civil Justice Agenda for the 1990s: Report of the AmericanBar Association National Conference on Access to Justice in the 1990s. Available athttp://www.abanet.org/legalservices/downloads/sclaid/accessconf.pdf.

—— (1994) Findings of the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study. Chicago, IL: American BarAssociation.

Baker, Tom (2005) The Medical Malpractice Myth. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.Bogart, W. A., & Neil Vidmar (1990) “Problems and Experiences with the Ontario

Civil Justice System: An Empirical Assessment,” in A. Hutchinson, ed., Access toJustice: Bridges and Barriers. Toronto: Carswell.

Bogart, W. A., Frederick Zemans, & Julia Bass, eds. (2005) Access to Justice for the NewCentury: The Way Forward. Toronto: Law Society of Upper Canada.

Boyer, Bruce A. (2005) “Justice, Access to the Courts, and the Right to Free Counselfor Indigent Parents: The Continuing Scourge of Lassiter v. Department of SocialServices of Durham,” 36 Loyola Univ. Chicago Law J. 363.

24The idea of a “civil Gideon” is by no means new; it was a central topic at an ABA on access tojustice conference in 1989; see American Bar Association (1990).


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Cappelletti, Mauro, & Bryant Garth (1978) Access to Justice: The Worldwide Movement toMake Rights Effective: A General Report. Milan: Dott. A. Guiffre Editore.

Coumarelos, Christine, Zhigang Wei, & Albert Z. Zhou (2006) Justice Made to Measure:NSW Legal Needs Survey in Dsiadvantaged Areas. Sydney: Law & Justice Founda-tion of New South Wales.

Cummings, Scott L. (2004) “The Politics of Pro Bono,” 52 UCLA Law Rev. 149.Curran, Barbara A. (1977) The Legal Needs of the Public: The Final Report of a National

Survey. Chicago, IL: American Bar Foundation.Currie, A. B. (2006) “A National Survey of the Civil Justice Problems of Low- and

Moderate-Income Canadians: Incidence and Patterns,” 13 International J. of theLegal Profession 217.

—— (2007) “The Legal Problems of Everyday Life,” paper presented at the AnnualMeeting of the Law and Society Association. Berlin, Germany.

Dunbar, Frederick C., & Faten Sabry (2007) The Propensity to Sue: Why Do People SeekLegal Actions. Boston, MA: NERA Economic Consulting. Available at http://www.nera.com/image/PUB_PropensityToSue_Apr2007.pdf.

Engler, Russell (2006) “Towards a Context-Based Civil Gideon Through Access toJustice Initiatives,” 40 Clearinghouse Rev. 196.

Ewick, Patricia, & Susan S. Silbey (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from EverydayLife. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.

FitzGerald, Jeffrey (1983) “Grievances, Disputes and Outcomes: Patterns of‘Middle Range’ Disputing in Australia and the United States,” 1 Law in Context15.

FitzGerald, Jeffrey, & Richard E. Miller (n.d.) “The Use of Lawyers and Their Effec-tiveness in Civil Legal Disputes,” unpublished paper. University of WisconsinLaw School.

Genn, Hazel (1999) Paths to Justice: What People Do and Think About Going to Law.Oxford: Hart Publishing.

Genn, Hazel, & Alan Paterson (2001) Paths to Justice, Scotland: What People in ScotlandDo and Think About Going to Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Co.

Harris, Donald, Mavis Maclean, Hazel Genn, Sally Lloyd-Bostock, Paul Fenn, PeterCorfield, & Yvonne Brittan (1984) Compensation and Support for Illness and Injury.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hensler, Deborah R., M. Susan Marquis, Allan F. Abrahamse, Sandra H. Berry,Patricia A. Ebener, Elizabeth Lewis, E. Allan Lind, Robert J. MacCoun, WillardG. Manning, Jeannette A. Rogowski, & Mary E. Vaiana (1991) Compensation forAccidental Injuries in the United States. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Hoffman, Morris B., Paul H. Rubin, & Joanna M. Shepherd (2005) “An EmpiricalStudy of Public Defender Effectiveness: Self-Selection by the ‘Marginally Indi-gent’,” 3 Ohio State J. of Criminal Law 223.

Hommerich, Christoph, & Matthias Kilian (2007). Mandanten und ihre Anwälte: Ergeb-nisse einer Bevölkerungsumfrage zur Inanspruchnahme und Bewertung von Rechtsdi-enstleistungen. Bonn, Germany: Deutscher Anwaltverlag.

Kritzer, Herbert M. (1998) Legal Advocacy: Lawyers and Nonlawyers at Work. Ann Arbor,MI: Univ. of Michigan Press.

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http://www.nera.com/image/PUB_PropensityToSue_Apr2007.pdf

—— (2004) Risks, Reputations, and Rewards: Contigency Fee Legal Practice in the UnitedStates. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.

Kritzer, Herbert M., W. A. Bogart, & Neil Vidmar (1991a) “The Aftermath of Injury:Cultural Factors in Compensation Seeking in Canada and the United States,”25 Law & Society Rev. 499.

—— (1991b) “Context, Context, Context: A Cross-Problem, Cross-Cultural Compari-son of Compensation Seeking Behavior,” paper presented at meeting of Law &Society Association. Amsterdam. Available at http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/~kritzer/research/propensity/context.pdf.

Kritzer, Herbert M., Neil Vidmar, & W. A. Bogart (1991c) “To Confront or Not toConfront: Measuring Claiming Rates in Discrimination Grievances,” 25 Law &Society Rev. 875.

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Miller, Richard E., & Austin Sarat (1980–1981) “Grievances, Claims, and Disputes:Assessing the Adversary Culture,” 15 Law & Society Rev. 525.

Murayama, Masayuki (2007) “Experiences of Problems and Disputing Behaviour inJapan,” 14 Meiji Law J. 1.

Pleasance, Pascoe, Nigel Balmer, & Alexy Buck (2006) Causes of Action: Civil Law andSocial Justice, 2nd ed. London: Legal Services Research Center.

Pleasence, Pascoe, Alexy Buck, Nigel Balmer, Aoife O’Grady, Hazel Genn, & MarisolSmith (2004) Causes of Action: Civil Law and Social Justice. London: LegalServices Research Center.

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Van Velthoven, B. C. J., & M. ter Voert (2004) “Paths to Justice in the Netherlands,”paper presented at the Fifth International Legal Services Research Conference.Cambridge, UK.

Appendix: State-Level Studies of Legal Needs inthe United States

Connecticut: Civil Legal Needs Among Low-Income Households in Con-necticut, a Report Provided by the Center for Survey Research & Analysis atthe University of Connecticut (April 2003).


http://www.polisci.wisc.edu

District of Columbia: Civil Legal Services Delivery in the District ofColumbia, a Report by the District of Columbia Bar Foundation (September2003).

Illinois: The Legal Aid Safety Net: A Report on the Legal Needs ofLow-Income Illinoisans (February 2005).

Indiana: Legal Needs Study of the Poor in Indiana (February 1992).Massachusetts: Massachusetts Legal Needs Survey: Findings from a

Survey of Legal Needs of Low-Income Households in Massachusetts (May2003).

Montana: Legal Needs of Low Income Households in Montana: FinalReport. By D. Michael Dale, A Study Conducted by the Montana StateBar Association (2005). Report available at http://www.nlada.org/DMS/Documents/1149970443.85/MT%20LNS%20Full_Report.pdf.

New Jersey: Legal Problems, Legal Needs: The Legal Assistance GapFacing Lower Income People in New Jersey. A Report from the PovertyResearch Institute of Legal Services of New Jersey (2002).

North Carolina: North Carolina Legal Needs Assessment. North Caro-lina Legal Services Planning Council (2003).

Oregon: The State of Access to Justice in Oregon; Part I: Assessment ofLegal Needs, by D. Michael Dale (March 2001).

Tennessee: Report from the Statewide Comprehensive Legal NeedsSurvey for 2003. Prepared for the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services byBarbara Barton, Bingham Pope, and Karen Homer, Office of Research andPublic Service, College of Social Work, University of Tennessee (January2004).

Vermont: Report on Investigation of Need and Assessment. Committeeon Equal Access to Legal Services (September 2001).

Washington: The Washington State Civil Legal Needs Study. Task Forceon Civil Equal Justice Funding, Washington State Supreme Court (Septem-ber 2003).

Wisconsin: Bridging the Justice Gap: Wisconsin’s Unmet Legal Needs.Final Report, Access to Justice Committee, State Bar of Wisconsin (March2007), available at http://www.wisbar.org/am/template.cfm?section=brodgomg_the_justic_gap.

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http://www.nlada.org/DMS

http://www.wisbar.org/am/template.cfm?section=