Law Commons^™

Self-Help, Reimagined, J. David Griener, Dalie Jimenez, Lois Lupica

Indiana Law Journal

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 …