Civil Gideon And Access To Justice

As the United States celebrates the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Gideon vs. Wainwright, recognizing a constitutional right to counsel to those charged with crimes who cannot afford representation, this is also an opportune time to highlight a growing movement to provide similar legal assistance in adverse civil proceedings where basic human needs are at stake. It is a time to highlight the hard work and emerging success of the effort led by the Philadelphia Bar Association's Civil Gideon and Access to Justice Task Force, launched five years ago by then-Chancellor Sayde J. Ladov, and culminating in a breakthrough year in 2013, under the leadership of Chancellor Kathleen D. Wilkinson, in which this blue-ribbon panel has led the way to new projects such as the landlord-tenant Legal Help Center in Municipal Court, exploration of new representation initiatives in the Family Court division, and the award of an ABA grant with the support of Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, that has paved the way for public hearings across Pennsylvania on the dire need for legal help and possible solutions.

Imagine the plight of a widowed senior citizen, living alone in a small house that needs a new bathtub and plumbing in the only bathroom in the house. A contractor knocks on her door one day, asking if she needs home repairs, and she agrees to sign an agreement he produces, with lots of small print, and then she pays him $3,000, the majority of her remaining savings. The contractor then sends in unlicensed workers, who install a new bathtub that falls through the foundation and can't be used; they also fail to turn off the water, so that leaking water drips down into the kitchen below, making it unusable. The contractor then disappears, leaving the widow without a kitchen or bathroom, or her money, and her calls to the contractor go unanswered.

Luckily, this senior knew about SeniorLAW Center and called them for help. The Center connected the widow with a pro bono attorney, who after obtaining a default judgment against the contractor, was finally able to collect through a debt owed by a third party. The widow then hired a second contractor who fixed her plumbing problems. Two years after she first paid for the work, she finally has her bathroom and kitchen back in working order.

But many others are not so lucky, in this and other basic needs relating to housing, child custody and essential health care needs. Indeed, some seniors like this one have had to abandon their homes or apartments and move in with relatives, or worse, move to shelters or become homeless.

This story, and thousands of others involving shelter, custody, health and safety reflect a growing recognition that in areas of fundamental need, counsel should be provided to those without the means to pay. This "Civil Gideon" movement, sometimes referenced by other equally compelling terms such as "right to counsel" and "access to justice" began formally in 2009 with formation of the Task Force - a diverse blue-ribbon panel of judges, bar leaders, legal services attorneys and private bar representatives, and set about this hard work by looking at some undisputed statistics and demographics about the state of legal representation for low-income individuals and families in Philadelphia, across the commonwealth and throughout the country.

These investigations confirmed what many legal services lawyers already knew, namely, that legal representation is largely unavailable to a large number of low-income Americans in desperate need. In 2009, the Legal Services Corporation...