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Frontline Justice is a national, non-partisan organization with a mission to mobilize, support, and equip trusted community advocates to become justice workers— frontline legal helpers who ensure that all Americans have access to affordable and effective support for accessing justice on everyday matters.
Read more about what we do here.
Community justice workers are frontline helpers like shelter volunteers, faith leaders, community health aides (promotoras) and others who are cross-trained to give their community essential legal help that lawyers aren’t providing.
Community justice workers can provide a range of critical legal help and assistance to community members on everyday legal matters, such as:
As the justice worker movement grows, community justice workers are taking on more roles to meet the growing need for creative solutions to legal challenges. The goal is for them to work wherever they are most needed, serving as trusted advisors who help people navigate complicated systems, find the resources they need, and solve their legal problems effectively.
While lawyers undergo years of specialized legal education and are authorized to represent clients in court, community justice workers generally focus on providing practical, basic legal advice and assistance in their communities. Justice workers do not have law degrees but instead receive targeted training in specific areas of civil law, such as housing, family law, or public benefits. They often serve as a bridge between the community and the legal system, offering initial support and helping individuals navigate the complexities of legal processes.
It’s time for America to reimagine what the delivery of legal services to underserved communities can look like. For over half a century, we’ve tried to fill the justice gap with more funding and more lawyers—it’s not working. Even though the number of lawyers in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1970, the access to justice crisis has only gotten worse. We need a more realistic, affordable and scalable solution. Put simply: lawyers don’t scale, meaning they’re too expensive for most people, not in the right places, and take too long to train.
People are more likely to be preyed upon due to the lack of good alternatives to expensive lawyers. Meanwhile, years of research show us that people who are trained but not licensed attorneys can provide certain types of critical, effective legal assistance. Through the proper training Frontline Justice provides, justice workers are equipped with the skills and knowledge to assist everyday people with the common legal challenges they face. We’re not talking about complex litigation or novel legal questions that end up in the Supreme Court. Most people’s unmet legal needs—even though they’re difficult for a layperson to tackle—are resolvable by someone with the basic training justice workers receive. What’s far worse is the widespread harm of not having any legal assistance because you can’t afford an expensive attorney.
Justice workers are a complement, not a replacement for legal aid. We have tried to solve the legal aid crisis by getting people more access to lawyers – more volunteer lawyers, more legal aid, and lower legal costs. These strategies have a place but have proven insufficient. Legal aid does not have the capacity to respond to the magnitude of the access to justice problem.
Justice workers can help. In fact, some community justice workers may work within legal aid organizations, which provide training and legal guidance, malpractice coverage, and resources to support their work. They have the knowledge and skills to help people with straightforward legal issues, allowing legal aid to more effectively direct its limited resources at assisting individuals with more complex legal problems that really do require the assistance of a licensed attorney.
