Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

In recent years a national movement to train lay advocates and advisors to assist people with their common justice problems has emerged in the United States. A host of new programs have launched that allow trained navigators and justice workers to provide legal assistance. These programs – developed in Alaska, Delaware, South Carolina, Arizona, and Utah, among other places – vary in their substantive focus, the skills they impart, and their approaches to reaching the people and communities they seek to help. The proliferation of lay legal assistance programs creates research imperatives and opportunities. These programs need to be assessed to determine whether they risk harm to users, improve access to justice, and are equivalent (or better) alternatives to relying on lawyers. While the legal profession rarely attempts to assess the value of lawyers’ services, evaluation is a core element in social and health services. Drawing on assessment in other service areas, we offer a preliminary framework for evaluating lay assistance programs that focuses on fidelity and harm avoidance, effectiveness for individual users, and social impact. We highlight the importance of adopting a people-centered perspective on the value of interventions intended to help people achieve just resolutions of their problems. We offer this framework as a first step in the development of shared rubrics for assessing lay legal assistance. Over time, our hope is that a greater emphasis on assessment will prompt the legal profession to adopt evidence-based approaches to determining the value of legal services.

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