Readout of Office for Access to Justice Director Rachel Rossi’s Trip to Arizona

Director Rachel Rossi of the Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) traveled to Tempe, Mesa and Phoenix, Arizona, to engage access to justice stakeholders and deliver open plenary remarks at the Access to Justice and Future of Justice Work Conference.

Director Rossi met with the U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino for the District of Arizona, where she discussed and applauded the office’s commitment to pro bono work. Additional meetings included the Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona and the Director of Public Defense Services of Maricopa County to discuss support for criminal justice, public defense and access to justice.

She also met with the Arizona Access to Justice Commission and the Arizona Bar Foundation to discuss state-level efforts to promote and expand civil legal services and improve Arizonans’ access to civil justice, including the recently convened State Agency Forum on Access to Justice.

Additionally, Director Rossi and ATJ staff met with legal services organizations about the significant challenges they face in providing basic legal needs, particularly in Tribal communities. They met with stakeholders who are part of a collaboration among five legal services organizations that will use non-attorney community justice workers to provide disaster legal services in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. The meeting included leaders and staff from Montana Legal Services, Anishinaabe Legal Services, DNA People’s Legal Services, Oklahoma Legal Services and Alaska Legal Services Corporation.

Following the convening, Director Rossi and ATJ visited two cutting-edge legal services programs run by Innovation for Justice, a legal innovation lab based in Arizona and Utah. As part of the visit, Director Rossi met with representatives from the Housing Stability Legal Advocate Initiative and the Domestic Violence Legal Advocate Initiative. ATJ heard about needs of the community and learned about the programs’ empowerment of community members to provide legal help with housing and domestic violence matters. In the meeting, advocates presented examples of the community-based justice worker nonlawyer program and provided an overview of their legal services design process.

The Access to Justice and Future of Justice Work Conference focused on ways in which trained nonlawyers and community justice workers can play a significant role in advancing access to justice. In her opening plenary remarks, Director Rossi highlighted recent efforts of ATJ to advance bold and creative solutions to civil justice gap, including the 2023 Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable report, Access to Justice in Federal Administrative Proceedings: Nonlawyer Assistance and Other Strategies. She highlighted the report’s compilation of numerous, varied ways in which nonlawyers provide legal representation and advice in federal agency administrative proceedings and how those uses can serve as an example for access to justice efforts throughout the U.S.