Helping Close Wisconsin’s Justice Gap
Every day across Wisconsin, thousands of individuals face life-altering legal challenges without a lawyer by their side. Whether navigating an eviction, seeking a protection order, or resolving a predatory debt collection lawsuit, ordinary Wisconsinites are routinely forced to navigate a complex legal system alone. This isn’t because they don’t value legal help; it’s because affordable help simply isn’t available.
The Proposal: Petition 26-04
To bridge this gap, the Wisconsin Access to Justice Commission has filed Petition 26-04 with the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This petition proposes a new court rule that would authorize Licensed Legal Advocates to provide limited civil legal services under the supervision of a licensed Wisconsin attorney.
Why This Matters
- Legal Deserts: Many rural and underserved urban areas in Wisconsin lack affordable practicing attorneys.
- Financial Barriers: Standard billable rates often exceed $300 an hour, making legal help financially impossible for many families.
- Proven Models: The proposal draws on successful models like physician assistants in healthcare and existing specialized advocates in immigration and tribal courts.
Legal Deserts & Unmet Need
Wisconsin’s civil legal aid justice gap has reached a tipping point. Despite the dedication of legal aid organizations and volunteer attorneys, the demand for free and low-cost civil legal help far outpaces the supply. That has been documented repeatedly at the national level and in Wisconsin.
A number of factors are fuelling this crisis. We live in a complicated and rules-based modern society. Our legal system was largely designed by lawyers for a time when it was assumed that most people would have lawyers helping them. That is no longer our reality.
In many of Wisconsin’s rural counties and underserved urban neighborhoods, there is a severe shortage of free or low cost practicing attorneys. These are what are called legal deserts and they are growing. In many rural areas, residents must travel long distances just to consult a lawyer, if they can find one.
For low income (and many Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed) families, hiring a lawyer is financially impossible when standard billable rates for attorneys often exceed $300 an hour. Wage growth has simply not kept pace with the increased cost of hiring lawyers. Lawyers in turn face their own challenges such as increasing educational debt burdens and the rising costs of running a small business.
As a result, in court dockets like family law, housing, and consumer debt collection, a vast majority of cases involve at least one self-represented litigant. Going to court unrepresented can lead to unnecessary delays, unfair outcomes, and immense personal stress.
Legal Advocates Are Part of the Solution
Just as the healthcare system relies on physician assistants and advanced practice nurses to expand patient care, reduce costs, and improve outcomes, the legal system can expand its capacity by empowering trained, supervised allied professionals. No single innovation will solve this problem, but licensed legal advocates (along with lawyers) are a key part of the solution.
The Commission’s proposal is tailored to address the scale of the need. For legal advocates to become a viable solution, we will need many hundreds of such helpers.
By placing these authorized legal helpers in local communities, legal aid offices, private law firms, and social service agencies, we can meet people where they already go for help.
Grounded In Research & Best Practices
Our proposal is not built from scratch; it represents a thoughtful, data-driven effort that incorporates lessons learned from similar programs across the nation, as well as existing initiatives in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin has a successful law student practice rule that served as a model for our licensed legal advocates proposal. A number of legal aid offices around the state have been experimenting with supervised advocates who provide assistance within the current rules to clients with legal issues in state and tribal court.
Wisconsin also benefits from specialized advocates in specific sectors—such as DOJ-accredited immigration representatives, tribal court advocates, disability and elder benefit specialists, and domestic violence advocates. Our proposed rule supplements and expands on those successful examples.
Where they have been employed, legal helpers, like the licensed legal advocates we are proposing have been a positive development. For example, in Arizona, which has the most expansive program, the result has been “high client satisfaction, low costs, and minimal complaints.”
We also learned from the example of states where the barriers to entry for similar programs were set too high. In those states, the program either failed or simply could not achieve the scale needed to address the problem. If too few people are willing and able to invest the time and money needed to become licensed legal advocates, then we would just be replicating the problem we are trying to fix.
Learn More
We’ve developed this short presentation and a set of frequently asked questions that you can review to educate yourself and others.
Public Comment Period
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is accepting public comments on Petition 26-04 through December 31, 2026.
How to Comment:
- Hard Copy: Mail one original and nine copies to: Clerk of the Supreme Court, P.O. Box 1688, Madison, WI 53701.
- Electronic Copy: Email an MS Word version to clerk@wicourts.gov.