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Bridging the Access to Justice Gap

The ������� Access to Justice Project (������� A2J), housed and coordinated within Haub Law’s Public Interest Law Center, is serving as a hub for community collaborations, programs, scholarship, policy initiatives, and hands-on innovative academic and non-credit bearing experiential law student and alumni opportunities. Together, ������� A2J is designed to more actively engage students in learning about and contributing to real-world efforts to address the access to justice gap.

Studies by Legal Service Corp. have found that as many as 86% of low-income clients’ civil legal problems receive inadequate or no legal help. Then, two years ago, world-wide Black Lives Matter protests and marches erupted, spurred by horrifying and irrefutable evidence -- most notably videos depicting the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery -- of the continuing social and legal inequities facing people of color and other disadvantaged and marginalized communities in the United States and worldwide. And this happened amid a global pandemic that, likewise, revealed and exacerbated these same inequities.

In 2020, the law school responded, announcing a renewed social justice agenda and reiterating its commitment to building upon the school’s longstanding work “in the pursuit of racial and social justice in the United States and in the world.” In announcing that agenda, Haub Law committed itself to ensuring that students, faculty and staff would use its training, energy, and resources to effect change in the way that law is taught, learned, and applied to promote social and access to justice.

������� A2J marks a significant step toward demonstrating that commitment, and advances several specific goals set by the law school including facilitating additional opportunities for Haub Law students, faculty, and staff to become involved in community social justice efforts, expanding social justice course offerings, and otherwise promoting significantly greater collaboration and engagement locally to improve access to justice in our immediate community.

������� A2J likewise advances several express priorities set out in �������’s most recent strategic plan, including offering innovative and interdisciplinary courses, expanding local experiential opportunities by leveraging Haub Law’s location, as well as partnering with external organizations to become a source of innovation and problem-solving. Also, part of the strategic plan is creating opportunities to attract external funding for research grants, curricular innovation, and entrepreneurship, enhancing support to pursue cross disciplinary collaborations and research, and elevating equity, access, belonging, and inclusion. ������� A2J is an umbrella initiative, which as it develops will have curricular, programmatic, pro bono, scholarship and policy components.