Washington Lawyer May/June 2026
By Jeremy Conrad
By now most of the legal community is familiar with this sobering statistic: Low-income Americans receive little to no legal help for 92 percent of their civil legal problems. In 2022 the Legal Services Corporation reported that 55 percent of people in this population say lack of access to an attorney substantially impacted various aspects of their life, from finances to mental and physical health to safety and relationships.
Across the country, a handful of states have taken steps to close the civil justice gap, including the issuance of limited licenses to specially trained nonlawyers, sometimes called legal paraprofessionals. In the District of Columbia, the D.C. Court of Appeals adopted new Rule 49(c)(14) allowing trained "community justice workers" to provide legal assistance to people who cannot afford an attorney. The February 2026 order marks the culmination of work by the D.C. Courts' Civil Legal Regulatory Reform Task Force, charged with studying strategies to address the gap between legal needs and available services for low- to moderate-income D.C. residents.
"This initiative reflects the D.C. Courts' deep commitment to ensuring that everyone who comes to us can meaningfully participate in their case," Court of Appeals Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby said in a press statement. "Too many people facing critical issues — like eviction, child custody, or safety from abuse — have had to do so without legal help. This program will expand support where it is needed most."
Path to Progress
In 2019 two revealing reports made an impact on changemakers. The D.C. Access to Justice Commission's report, Delivering Justice: Addressing Civil Legal Needs in the District of Columbia, outlined significant ongoing inequities in civil representation. In a variety of housing, family law, and small estate cases, for example, 75 percent to 97 percent of litigants appeared in court without a lawyer.
"We know that the vast majority of people who utilize the court system in the types of cases that are more likely to be experienced by low- to moderate-income people … housing, family law, debt, probate, and more, go it alone," says Nancy Drane, the commission's executive director who served on the D.C. Courts' Civil Legal Regulatory Reform Task Force.
California's first justice gap report also caught the attention of the D.C. Bar Global Legal Practice Committee (now the Innovations in Legal Practice Committee), which initiated a study of remedial measures that could address the lack of representation for civil litigants in the District. Charles "Rick" Talisman, who chaired the committee in 2019, credits several individuals for initiating and driving the discussion on the potential mobilization of nonlawyers. Among them were former D.C. Bar president Geoffrey M. Klineberg, who served as the committee's inaugural chair; Amy L. Neuhardt, who later led the committee; and Superior Court Senior Judge Gregory Mize, who co-chaired the subcommittee that produced a draft report in July 2022.
Mize and Legal Services Corporation President Emeritus James Sandman brought the report to the D.C. Courts' attention and, in response, the courts formed a task force in July 2023 to study the D.C. Bar subcommittee's draft report, explore states' nonlawyer assistance programs, gather feedback from stakeholders, and prepare its own recommendations for addressing the gap in access to civil legal services.
"At that point, the Bar group effectively stopped its work because the courts had taken it over," Talisman says. "The draft report of the subcommittee was never presented to the full committee for approval, but it gave the D.C. Courts a basis to move forward because we had already done a significant amount of homework. Our draft report had lots of citations, statistics, data, information [from roundtable discussions], and various forms of due diligence."
Co-chaired by Judges Roy W. McLeese III and Alfred S. Irving Jr., the task force sought input from a variety of sources. "We polled stakeholders, including the general public, court users, legal services providers, and lawyers, to collect as much information as we could to learn about people's concerns, attitudes, and needs," McLeese says. "The task force also did substantial research on similar programs that had been stood up around the country and programs that were under consideration. We also got information from academics and legal services providers … we reached as broadly as we could and did an extensive inquiry to inform our recommendations."
The task force published its report in July 2025. After a three-month comment period, the Court of Appeals adopted the task force's recommendations, with some modifications, on February 5, 2026.
Models for Nonlawyer Assistance
Nonlawyer assistance programs remain relatively uncommon and vary significantly in nomenclature and structure, but the task force identified two leading approaches. One model would tap community justice workers (CJWs) and the other, licensed legal practitioners (LLPs).
"The idea is that folks who are not lawyers, who are not members of [a] bar, can perform a variety of tasks if they are given appropriate training and do so in conjunction with legal services providers," says McLeese. "Entities in the District are already providing legal services, often to low-income folks. This model would allow their employees, or those working in a clinic or in association with the legal services provider, to provide assistance under the supervision of an attorney employed by that provider, with the appropriate training and through an appropriately organized program."
The country's first CJW program was initiated by the Alaska Legal Services Corporation in 2019, addressing the severe civil justice crisis faced by the nation's largest and most rural state. Inspired by Alaska's existing tribal community health model, the CJW program trains local community members to provide legal assistance and, following the 2022 Alaska Bar rules amendment, represent clients in court.
The LLP model differs in a number of respects. While CJW assistance would be provided under attorney supervision and on a pro bono basis, LLPs would operate independently on a for-profit basis, offering legal services at a lower cost than typical attorney rates.
"[LLPs] would be specialists, with a more limited focus," McLeese explains. "They wouldn't need to prove that they could handle any kind of legal issue, like someone who is admitted to the D.C. Bar, but instead they would have training requirements that are tailored to an area — domestic violence, for example — and there would be training and testing to show that they are proficient in that specific area of the law."
The D.C. Courts task force report offered three main recommendations. First, the District should create a CJW program. Second, the D.C. Courts should further study the implementation of an LLP program. Third, the D.C. Courts should broadly apply Court of Appeals Rule 49(c)(10), which permits nonattorneys to provide legal services as part of a program expressly authorized by the court.
McLeese says this last recommendation encourages the community and courts to address the representation gap creatively. "People can sandbox ideas that aren't exactly CJW or LLP model programs. They can go to the court, make an application, and the court can pilot a project by authorizing it for a limited time, or with a limited scope."
Concerns and Considerations
According to Talisman, the task force was unanimous in its opinion that the community justice worker model can be effective and accomplished pretty quickly. Legal services organizations would provide the training, oversight, and support of nonattorney practitioners, whose focus on a low-income community that would otherwise not hire attorneys eliminates concerns about their impact on the market for legal services.
"[For] the licensed legal professional [option], I think there was less of a consensus about how the model would work, and there was also the realization that, even for those of us who advocated for it, it would take some time to figure out the details, so we decided to suggest further study to develop a good and reliable LLP model," Talisman says.
Drane of the Access to Justice Commission elaborates on the broad support for the CJW model. "The report recommendations would allow us to tap into trusted community members we know District residents go to when they're experiencing a problem," Drane says. "Residents often seek help from people they interact with — medical professionals, domestic violence counselors, social workers, community health workers, the faith community. [CJW] programs are unique in how they leverage those people in the community to connect residents with legal help."
Toni Marsh, former president of the American Association for Paralegal Education, served on the task force and was a strong advocate for the LLP model. In her opinion, nonattorney legal professionals could provide assistance in the legally simple, factually complicated matters in housing, family law, and probate — some of the areas in which the civil legal justice gap is most pronounced.
For Marsh, the benefits provided by CJWs would not impact many moderate-income individuals who lack representation. "There are many kinds of legal aid available for the indigent," Marsh says. "Maybe not enough assistance, but there's some out there. But what about the rest of the unrepresented? What about people like me … [who] can't afford a big law firm, but certainly don't qualify for legal aid? What do I do? I go to court unrepresented and I lose."
Marsh acknowledges that an LLP model is significantly more complicated to implement than the CJW approach, but she remains confident that study and planning can lead to an effective program.
Concerns about LLP programs are typically rooted in questions relating to their financial viability, the possibility of nonattorney practitioners competing with attorneys for business, and concerns about substandard representation for low- and moderate-income litigants.
Critics often cite Washington State's limited license legal technician (LLLT) program, which was the first of its kind, as a cautionary tale. Washington created the LLLT program in 2012 to provide family law assistance, but decided to sunset it 10 years later citing the cost of administering it and lack of interest.
Marsh says the collapse of the LLLT program is the result of numerous factors. "It's not that it was a bad idea; it's just that it was poorly executed," she says. The overcautious approach taken by the state at the program's outset meant severe limitations on the kinds of services LLLTs could provide, according to Marsh. As for the expense, "the program was never meant to be a profit center," Marsh says. "It was meant to deliver access to justice, not make money for the state of Washington."
Marsh suggests that a better example of successful nonattorney legal assistance programs can be found in Arizona. The designation of legal paraprofessionals (LPs), originally termed limited license legal practitioners, came out of the 2019 report by that state's Task Force on the Delivery of Legal Services. LPs can be licensed to practice in family, administrative, probate, criminal, juvenile dependency, and limited jurisdiction civil law. Marsh interviewed Arizona court staff about the program as part of her work for the D.C. Courts task force and found that the consensus was overwhelmingly positive.
"It's a real success story," Marsh says. According to the latest annual report of the Arizona Board of Nonlawyer Legal Service Providers, no complaints were filed or discipline imposed against a legal paraprofessional by the State Bar in 2024.
Community Response
Comments in response to the D.C. Courts task force's report were largely supportive of the group's findings and recommendations. Of the more than 200 comments submitted, all but four supported the task force's proposals.
If anything, many of the organizations, law firm pro bono partners, and individuals that responded during the comment period called for a broader and more rapid response than the one proposed by the task force, suggesting that a larger number of organizations could be authorized to sponsor community justice workers, and that CJWs could be permitted to represent clients in an expanded capacity that includes evidentiary hearings and trials. Others urged the immediate implementation of an LLP program, citing the severity of the civil justice crisis and the needs of moderate-income litigants in the District.
Some commenters expressed concerns regarding the capacity of the District, and of sponsoring organizations, to provide adequate oversight and consumer protection. Others raised questions regarding whether CJWs would have attorney–client privilege, how the responsibility to maintain client confidences would reconcile with mandatory reporting requirements, and whether malpractice insurance would be available or affordable for CJWs or their sponsoring organizations. There were some who also expressed opposition to the establishment of what they characterized as a tiered system of representation, calling instead for the institution of a "civil Gideon" right to representation.
Many of these concerns were addressed in the D.C. Court of Appeals' order, which stated that empirical evidence supported the conclusion that properly operated CJW programs can provide quality representation. The court also added language to Rule 49(c)(14)(M)(iv) to extend a duty of confidentiality to a CJW, their supervising attorney, and the sponsoring legal services provider. Additionally, the court pointed out that there are existing exceptions to mandatory reporting rules that would potentially apply to CJWs, including D.C. Code exemptions for mandatory reporters employed by attorneys.
The court was unconvinced by other complaints, stating that it is unclear on what basis it could create a right to representation in all civil matters, or where public funds would be found to finance such a right. It also said that it was widely understood that increasing pro bono requirements alone would be inadequate to address the access to justice crisis.
A number of details remain to be determined. The court will issue a separate order designating an entity with the ability to facilitate, monitor, and assess CJW programs. Regardless, the decision provides direction in helping to close the District's civil justice representation gap.
"Today the vast majority of people who can't afford lawyers are forced to go it alone — to try to navigate our complicated legal system by themselves, with no help at all," the Legal Services Corporation's Sandman says. "That is not right. Community justice workers who are well-trained, supervised by legal aid lawyers, and bound by ethical obligations can surge the supply of helpers. They can provide competent, timely, targeted, useful assistance to make justice accessible to those who most need it."
D.C. Bar staff writer Jeremy Conrad is an attorney who has spent much of the past decade writing about the legal profession. Previously he practiced in immigration law and criminal defense.
