Michele Statz News Today

Through a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, researchers will expand Alaska’s ‘community justice worker’ model, allowing non-attorneys to represent people.

Unlike the shortage of attorneys available to represent clients in rural areas, experts say there are an adequate number of courthouses to serve people living in remote areas of the country. It's getting to them that's the problem.

Through a $1 million grant, a team of researchers will be evaluating Alaska’s “community justice worker” model, which allows non-attorneys to represent people, to see if it can work in rural Minnesota

Michele Statz, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth Campus, and her research team have been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s CIVIC Innovation Challenge to improve access to civil justice for rural and Indigenous communities in Alaska.

In much of rural Georgia, there are too few lawyers to meet residents’ urgent legal needs, forcing self-represented litigants to navigate an impenetrable system, but courts, law firms and nonlawyers can help address these legal deserts in various ways, says Lauren Sudeall at Georgia State University College of Law.