My ex-husband abused me through the court system. I had no money left. I didn't have nowhere to go.
I would have been out on the street. It's frustrating and it's heartbreaking when you can't afford an attorney. You don't know what to do. LSC's 2022 Justice Gap Study shows that low-income Americans do not get the help they need with a staggering 92% of their civil legal problems.
The study also found that 74% of low-income households faced at least one civil legal problem in the past year alone. But in the United States, there is no right to counsel in most civil legal matters, and help can be hard to access. You could lose your home.
You could lose your child. You could not get your health care. The fact is that we make a huge difference in people's lives.
Nearly half of those surveyed did not seek the legal help they needed because of cost concerns, even with a serious civil legal problem. It seems like this is the moment in time where we ought to stand up. Address this issue and make our civil justice system more fairly accessible for low-income folks so that we can keep faith with the country's promise of equal justice for all.
There is a huge gap, a justice gap, between the legal needs of the almost 50 million low-income people in America and the resources out there to help them. The system is set up for somebody to... lose if they don't have counsel. There are not enough legal aid lawyers in the country to touch even a small percentage of the need that's out there.
There are people out there that need help and don't know where to turn to. But I thank God I'm one of the ones that got the help that I needed. Now is the time to close the justice gap.