Opinion: Too many people can't afford legal advice. Let non-lawyers help.

Last month, I talked with folks at the Project Purpose fall pop-up in Anacostia about D.C.’s access-to-justice crisis: the enormous chasm between the millions of people who need legal help and those who actually receive it. Sure enough, everyone in attendance agreed that legal help is too expensive and inaccessible. Dozens of people signed letters in support of a proposal currently being considered by the D.C. Courts to create a “community justice worker” program, which would authorize trained, supervised community members without law degrees to give free, basic legal advice.

As a longtime D.C. resident myself with experience working in the D.C. Jail, the hospitality industry, and education, I’ve known many people struggling with different legal needs who had no choice but to go without help: Parents dealing with custody issues, small business owners who needed help navigating bureaucracy, bereaved families stumbling through the probate process, and more.

One man in Anacostia told me how he had his car impounded by the Metropolitan Police Department but could not afford to hire an attorney to help him recover it. As often happens when people don’t receive legal help, the problems cascaded – without his car, he couldn’t make it to his job or take his children to school.

Sadly, these stories are not the exception but the rule. In America, 92 percent of low income Americans do not receive adequate help for their civil legal needs. In D.C., according to the 2025 DC Courts Civil Legal Regulatory Reform report, 75 percent of plaintiffs are unrepresented in housing conditions cases, 83 percent in divorce and custody cases, and 97 percent in small estate probate cases. Unsurprisingly, access to a lawyer drastically improves outcomes. A University of Chicago Law School analysis found that pro se litigants lost their cases roughly 80 to 90 percent of the time.  

At the heart of the access-to-justice crisis is cost. The 2025 report estimated that one hour of a lawyer’s time costs an average of $291 in D.C. — a high sum for even moderate-income residents. Although Legal Aid DC can provide attorneys at no cost to their clients, they are often under-resourced and have to turn people away. Also, most middle-income residents do not qualify for their help. And where there is a cost problem, there is also a supply problem: Believe it or not, D.C.— as well as the rest of the country — simply does not have enough lawyers to go around.

The proposed community justice worker program would help fill this gap, giving D.C. residents who qualify for legal aid access to more free help with issues like housing, family law, benefits, and debt. States like Alaska and Arizona have created similar programs, with promising results. In Alaska, for instance, community justice workers were “100 percent successful in resolving their clients’ SNAP delay issues.”

Over 160 D.C. residents submitted comments to the court ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline in favor of the proposed community justice worker program. The courts are now considering whether and how to implement it. There is currently no timeline, but we know that D.C. residents want this program and would benefit from it.

This proposal is a promising start — but it should also be seen as a first step toward something bigger. D.C. can do more than create a new program; it can lead the nation in rethinking who is allowed to give basic legal help in the first place.

Right now, unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules prohibit anyone without a law degree from offering even basic legal advice, no matter how knowledgeable they are. A social worker who helps someone fill out a custody form or a church volunteer who assists with a benefits appeal could technically be breaking the law. These rules don’t protect the public — they protect a monopoly on the practice of law, and they’re the biggest barriers between vulnerable people and the legal help they need.

As the D.C. Courts move forward with this proposal, they should also take this opportunity to clarify and modernize the District’s UPL rules. By drawing a clear line between high-risk legal presentation and safe, everyday guidance, the courts can empower even more trusted residents to help their neighbors.

Dylan DelliSanti is an Activism Policy Associate at the Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm that defends the constitutional rights of everyday Americans.