skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Search for: All records

Award ID contains: 1421501

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. We will never have enough lawyers to serve the civil legal needs of all low and moderate income (LMI) individuals who must navigate civil legal problems. A significant part of the access to justice toolkit must include self-help materials. That much is not new; indeed, the legal aid community has been actively developing pro se guides and forms for decades. But the community has hamstrung its creations in two major ways: first, by focusing these materials almost exclusively on educating LMI individuals about formal law, and second, by considering the task complete once the materials have been made available to self-represented individuals. In particular, modern self-help materials fail to address many psychological and cognitive barriers that prevent LMI individuals from successfully deploying the substance of the materials. In this Article we make two contributions. First, we develop a theory of the obstacles LMI individuals face when attempting to deploy professional legal knowledge.Second, we apply learning from fields as varied as psychology, public health education,artificial intelligence, and marketing to develop a framework for how courts, legal aid organizations, law school clinics, and others might reconceptualize the design and delivery of civil legal materials for unrepresented individuals. We illustrate our framework with examples of reimagined civil legal materials. 
    more » « less