Director Rachel Rossi Delivers Keynote Remarks at the Georgia Legal Services Program Pro Bono Conference

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you very much for that generous introduction, Executive Director Coppedge. I’m especially grateful that you are here. With your strong access to justice roots, including as a long serving former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, I know that your commitment to public service runs deep. I am inspired by your dedication and leadership to public service and pro bono legal assistance in Georgia.

Also, a big thank you to Heidi Behnke for all your work to make it possible for us to attend today. And to all those who convened and planned this conference.

It is an honor to be here at the Georgia Legal Services Pro Bono Conference. Your positive energy and enthusiasm on access to justice issues is palpable and infectious, in a good way.

I am truly delighted to join all of you to shine a light on the terrific access to justice work being done in the state of Georgia. You are leading innovative civil legal aid models and pro bono volunteer opportunities, including through the Georgia Legal Services Program and the many of the other organizations and leaders present here today.

As you may know, the Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) is a standalone office within the Justice Department with a mission to ensure access to the promises and protections of our civil and criminal legal systems for all communities. We work to break down barriers to the department’s founding principle and enduring promise: equal justice under law.

We believe that justice belongs to everyone. If you cannot access it because of how much money you have, who you are where you live or what language you speak – we simply cannot call it justice.

In pursuit of this ideal, our office is:

• Dismantling economic barriers. As one example, we recently issued a report highlighting common and innovative approaches taken by state and local jurisdictions nationwide, that are reducing criminal and civil fines and fees, particularly for youth and low-income individuals.
• We’re disrupting language access barriers. We house the department-wide Language Access Coordinator, who chairs the department’s Language Access Working Group, and leads our Language Access Program. Last year, we led efforts to modernize the department’s Language Access Plan for the first time in over a decade.
• We are working to shine a light on the access to justice needs of the nearly 26 million Americans with disabilities, including through the release of our latest resource, “Access to Justice is Disability Access.”
• And, knowing that many of our challenges are shared, we actively exchange best practices and share goals and lessons with stakeholders across the federal government and around the globe.

This includes directing and staffing the work of the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable, or LAIR, a collaboration of 28 federal agencies co-chaired by the Attorney General and White House Counsel. This past April, ATJ launched a new LAIR resource, a hub for access to funding opportunities across federal agencies that can support legal assistance.

This also includes our global collaboration, to assist with U.S. efforts to implement United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 16, to provide access to justice for all, and to serve as the US expert on access to justice. As just one example, we recently participated in negotiations in Vienna that led to the passage of the first ever UN resolution on equal access to justice.

We’re also looking inward at our own agency, where we are dismantling barriers to accessing the Department of Justice. We recently launched a new department initiative, Access DOJ, a department-wide initiative led by ATJ, that uses human-centered design principles to make the department’s services more accessible, effective and efficient.

And of course, we are promoting access to counsel and legal help:

• Including by piloting the provision of civil legal assistance empowerment workshops for people incarcerated in federal Bureau of Prisons facilities, and by implementing the first-ever medical-legal partnership in a prison facility in the United States. Through this partnership, a team of law and medical professionals will help apply for access to Social Security disability relief for those who qualify, with the goal of promoting successful reentry.
• And we are supporting public defense, through steps like our first-of its kind review of access to counsel in federal pretrial detention facilities, and our Public Defense Resource Hub, a one-stop destination of resources and materials to support public defenders.

Of course, one of our critical efforts to support access to counsel and close the justice gap is through our leadership of the Federal Government Pro Bono Program.

Our current Attorney General, Merrick Garland, was a driving force behind the initial establishment of the formalized program when he worked for then-Attorney General Janet Reno. The Justice Department believes strongly in the importance of pro bono work as a tool in closing the justice gap, which keeps too many Americans from getting needed legal help, supports federal government attorneys engaging in pro bono activity.

Indeed, the Federal Government Pro Bono Program offers an opportunity to mobilize a massive number of lawyers in our country — federal government attorneys and staff — to help bridge the access to justice gap.

And today, ATJ is thrilled to be prioritizing expanding the Federal Government Pro Bono Program’s resources, staff and reach.

Led by my colleague Laura Klein, who has been the Justice Department’s Pro Bono Program Manager for over 20 years, the Federal Government Pro Bono Program has grown from 23 federal agencies in Washington D.C. to over 50 agencies with branches in eight additional cities. During this time, the program has been recognized nationally by the American Bar Association (ABA), Legal Services Corporation, Equal Justice Conference and by legal services organizations around the country that have connected with and benefited from federal government volunteers through this program.

I am particularly proud of the Federal Government Pro Bono Program’s significant work and partnership with you here in Georgia. Last September, we launched the newest branch of the Federal Government Pro Bono Program in Atlanta, with the support and presence of U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia and the involvement of Georgia Legal Services Program (GSLP), Atlanta Legal Aid, Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation and other Georgia legal aid partners. We now have an active Atlanta area Federal Government Pro Bono Committee and feature a detailed Pro Bono Volunteer Guide for Georgia Federal employees on our Office for Access to Justice website, which highlights an amazing array of volunteer pro bono opportunities with your organizations.

And just this past April, the Atlanta Federal Government Pro Bono Committee hosted an event for Federal employees called “Lift Up Pro Bono Atlanta — In Federal Leadership” — which featured a diverse panel of federal leaders from across five different agencies, who all spoke powerfully about the value of pro bono in their offices, the importance of their agency's pro bono policies, and the example set by their staff in doing pro bono work with your organizations.

Next month during the annual Federal Government Pro Bono Week, we will offer programming to train our attorneys, to encourage their involvement and to celebrate their pro bono accomplishments.

That week will also feature not one, but two pro bono legal clinics in Georgia. One will be the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation’s virtual Saturday Lawyer Program and the second will be an in-person clinic in Henry County with GLSP, on consecutive Saturdays. This will be part of a national effort. Our Program will be recruiting volunteers for more than 10 pro bono clinics nationwide during Pro Bono week.

We will also feature ABA Free Legal Answers during pro bono week, educating our attorneys about virtual volunteering and facilitating their use of the program, which we know helps people in Georgia to get legal advice when they can’t find a local pro bono attorney.

As I think about all of this work and collaboration, what I love most about my job, and I know it’s a passion many of us share — is that we get to focus on the communities that are too often left behind. Those who are not at the table. Those who slip through the cracks, who are underserved and marginalized and who far too often experience insurmountable barriers to accessing justice.

And to do so effectively, we have to know the broad and diverse communities that we serve. We have to regularly engage with the community, and better understand where the greatest barriers lie, and who we are not reaching. We have to utilize people-centered strategies in all the work that we do.

Here in Georgia, it’s inspirational to see you take this charge to heart. You’re crafting programs and access to justice solutions specific to the issues faced by diverse communities across the state.

As one example, we’ve learned about GLSP’s work to address the intersection of poverty and crime through work on domestic violence and human trafficking, including your recently launched pilot project to engage private attorneys to provide divorces to survivors of family violence, securing representation for 43 clients.

We know that access to justice barriers can be particularly harmful when safety from violence is at stake. This month, we celebrate the anniversary of the Pro Bono Work to Empower and Represent Act, known as the POWER Act.

The POWER Act was established to engage federal district court judges in promoting pro bono legal services as a critical way to empower survivors of domestic violence. It requires federal courts for each judicial district to annually lead at least one public event, in partnership with a state, local, tribal or territorial domestic violence service provider or coalition and a state or local volunteer lawyer project, promoting pro bono legal services as a critical way in which to empower survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking and to engage citizens in assisting those survivors.

Civil legal representation is often critical to survivors of domestic violence. Cascading legal needs go beyond the immediate need for a protective order or services related to the violence or abuse. They can include issues related to housing, family, child welfare, healthcare, education, consumer debt or the ability to maintain a stable income.

I know this is not new information for many of you as you work every day to improve the lives of survivors through the vital legal representation you provide.

We’ve also heard about your work to serve the communities with no lawyers, the “legal deserts” across this state. Having seven counties with no lawyers and an additional 58 counties with 10 or fewer lawyers — and with 70% of Georgia’s lawyers located in Atlanta, and 70% of the state’s poor outside Atlanta — we join you in recognizing the severity of this crisis and the need for innovative solutions.

When attorneys and resources are clustered in only a few cities, many parts of the state are difficult to serve. Closing the access to justice gaps in these legal deserts is a priority for ATJ and we are currently developing strategies to help address it.

We know that rural America is not a monolith. The experiences of a rural agricultural community in Georgia differ considerably from those of a remote Alaska Native Village. The lack of a single definition of rurality also complicates analysis of rural access to justice at a national level.

Yet the available data show how rural communities across the country face common disparities that contribute to a growing access to justice crisis.

When compared with their urban counterparts, rural Americans are more likely to have household incomes below the federal poverty line. 

And 40% of U.S. counties have fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents, compared with 14 per 1,000 in New York City and 40 per 1,000 in the District of Columbia.

Rural low-income Americans do not receive any or enough legal help for 94% of substantial civil legal problems.

Simply put, access to justice barriers are often exacerbated for rural Americans, and these unique and complex hurdles are too often ignored. But justice should not depend on geography.

The mission of ATJ is to ensure that the promises and protections of our civil and criminal legal systems are available to all communities — this includes rural America. Realizing this mission requires more than improving access to court proceedings. It means ensuring fair access to the wide range of benefits and protections provided for by law, especially for rural communities who have historically been underserved.

We are working to make headway on these goals in rural areas by developing community centered solutions, supporting innovative delivery methods for legal services, creating new approaches to recruit and retain rural attorneys and leveraging technology responsibly.

We’ve prioritized engagement to inform our work. In the past year, my staff and I visited law schools in six different states, including Georgia, to promote public defense and related careers, with a particular focus on rural and Tribal jurisdictions.

We heard from students, faculty and practitioners about the barriers to practice in rural areas, and about innovative programs that jurisdictions are implementing to ensure continued availability of lawyers and legal assistance.

On one stop, ATJ visited Maine, where a new state indigent defense office has created a Rural Defense Unit, a corps of state-employed attorneys who travel around rural counties to provide public defender services.

In other states, like South Dakota, the state courts, bar and legislature have worked together to create financial incentive programs to encourage newly graduated attorneys to begin their legal careers in rural areas of the state. We also met with scholars and policymakers around the country who are seeking to address the crisis.

We’ve visited access to justice commissions in Tennessee and Texas, learning about their innovative efforts to reach legal deserts across the states.

Earlier this year, we published a resource that summarizes the unique access to justice challenges that rural communities face and that promotes effective strategies and solutions.

As another example, we are leveraging technology to increase the reach of legal assistance is through the Pro Bono Program’s new DOJ Pro Bono Portal on Paladin.

In October 2023, ATJ launched the portal to modernize the Pro Bono Program and enable Justice Department attorneys to find pro bono opportunities statewide.

As many of you may know, the portal is an innovative tool which provides quick and simple access to pro bono opportunities with the click of a mouse. Every Justice Department attorney in Georgia has a personal account and gets weekly emails announcing the pro bono opportunities that you have posted. Our attorneys in Atlanta can see opportunities in any part of the state where you have clients who need help, and they can sign up to volunteer remotely.

The portal encourages pro bono engagement regardless of geography, and makes it easier for department attorneys to volunteer for those who may have previously been out of range.

We see and appreciate the excellent postings your organizations have placed on the portal. Launching the portal has changed how the Pro Bono Program is expanding: from a branch-by-branch approach to a nationwide strategy. To date, over 1,200 Justice Department attorneys in 14 states have logged in to their Paladin DOJ Pro Bono Portal accounts to find pro bono opportunities and events.

As I close, I want to again commend the leaders in this room for your commitment to closing the justice gap. Your theme for this conference is timely – “playing to our strengths, bringing together diverse perspectives and roles to up your pro bono game.”

It reflects how not one of us, and not one tool alone will close the justice gap. But together, with all of our diverse strengths, tools, voices and areas of influence, justice for all is possible.

This includes continuing to support traditional tools, including civil legal aid and pro bono work — which are essential elements to this effort. We have to dedicate resources to these programs, and to continue to ensure we are innovating and modernizing their reach.

But it also requires us all to think creatively about innovative and new strategies. It requires us to better engage with the communities we serve, to understand where the greatest need exists and to tailor our strategies to be responsive.

This is what you’re demonstrating here in Savannah, with programs focused on housing, public benefits, probate and senior law issues, but also specifically taking action to address unique and critical areas of need for the community in Georgia – addressing legal deserts, domestic violence, human trafficking victims and taking efforts to assist citizens preparing for reentry after serving time in prison.

And fitting with this theme, I challenge you all, as I challenge myself, to never stop thinking creatively and strategically about what justice should look like. To never give up on that ideal, and to continuously re-visit our strategies. To continue to bring new voices to the table, and to develop new partnerships that can help us develop new solutions.

As a young public defender, I had a client who taught me this lesson in a way I have never forgotten.

He was houseless, had mental health issues and consistently racked up new misdemeanor charges for sleeping on the sidewalk. He always came back to court, with his shopping bag full of citations, dutifully, for each arraignment.

But when I told this client that the system afforded him two options — he could plead guilty or we could fight his cases at trial, he told me he chose neither. He came back to court each time, and each time I presented him with the only two options under the legal system as it operated. And he just continued to say no — neither of those options was justice.

He knew that a system that would force him to obtain a criminal conviction for being not having a home and a bed was not justice. And he knew that spending weeks in back-to-back trials was simply not justice either. He refused to accept the system as it was, and he stood firm in his vision of what justice should look like.

I ended up crafting significant mitigation and pushing for months. Eventually — once I had tired everyone in that courtroom out — all his citations were dismissed.

That client taught me an invaluable lesson about the mission of justice that I have carried with me throughout my career. I wasn’t wrong — what I presented as the only options, were the only options. And as many of us in this room know very well, the result is not always a victory like we had in his case.

But that client reminded me that this pursuit often requires us to reimagine our systems, use all of the tools at our disposable and to push for visions that others may not yet see as possible. To never accept the status quo, and to never give up on the ideals of equal access to justice for all.

So, again, thank you for being here today and being a part of this work. And for having the audacity to continue to believe in access to justice for all.

As you continue in this difficult mission and this awesome responsibility, please know that ATJ stands shoulder to shoulder with you as a partner and ally.

Together, we can close the justice gap.

Thank you.