Washington Lawyer - November/December 2020 - 28

FEATURE
These are important services and serve as an excellent starting point for
assisting those who may not be able to secure full representation. And in
its 2019 report, "Delivering Justice: Addressing Civil Legal Needs in the
District of Columbia," the D.C. Access to Justice Commission prepared a
roadmap of the overall civil justice concerns that need to be addressed.

TAP NONLAWYERS TO EXPAND ACCESS
Even with these initiatives, it remains clear that lawyers alone cannot fill
the existing needs in our courts. There are many services that lawyers
don't need to handle, and others that lawyers don't have the exclusive
competence to do. The D.C. metropolitan area is rich in community
resources to supplement legal services, given the proper training.
These resources include a potentially large pool of law students; university students; professionals in fields such as social work, psychology, and
debt counseling; and faith and other community leaders, among others,
who might be willing to provide pro bono services to help SRLs prepare
for or resolve in-court disputes.
Law students, for example, can be trained to help pro se litigants
complete and file court forms, gather documents and other necessary
information for litigation, and perhaps accompany SRLs to court hearings
and assist them in responding to questions that arise about information
on forms they helped complete. As Mary McClymont of Georgetown
Law's Justice Lab wrote in her June 2019 report, "Nonlawyer Navigators
in State Courts: An Emerging Consensus," programs all over the country
have demonstrated that students can effectively serve as navigators.

I can attest to that from personal experience after teaching a practicum
at Georgetown Law in which our students successfully helped pro se
litigants prepare pleadings at Superior Court's Family Court Self-Help
Center.
There are also endless possibilities for using pro bono experts in court
who have competence that lawyers typically do not possess. Debt counselors, for example, could advocate solutions on behalf of tenants to
avoid evictions going forward. Housing experts could assist tenants in
negotiating settlements with landlords on necessary repairs. Just this
past August, the Arizona Supreme Court amended its rules to permit
nonlawyer experts to serve in such roles.
Are these essential reforms possible? Absolutely! How can we make
them happen? It will undoubtedly take the combined involvement and
support of the D.C. Bar working closely with the D.C. Access to Justice
Commission, DC Bar Foundation, D.C. Superior Court, D.C. Consortium of
Legal Services Providers, the mayor's office, and the D.C. Council. And it is
essential to involve nonlawyers in the conversation, particularly community representatives from Wards 5, 7, and 8. It is time to acknowledge that
SRLs deserve priority attention and to map out solutions - including
those set out here - to a problem that in good conscience the District
can no longer ignore.
Sheldon Krantz is a retired partner in residence at DLA Piper, an adjunct
professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, and a member of the
D.C. Access to Justice Commission.

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Washington Lawyer - November/December 2020

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