SRLN Brief: Justice Corps (SRLN 2015)

Justice Corps is a program that works in affiliation with Americorps and has been of tremendous benefit to numerous courts, most especially in California.

The California JusticeCorps program assists California courts in meeting the needs of self-represented litigants (people who come to court without lawyers) by recruiting and training over 250 college students and recent graduates annually to help litigants in California’s court-based self-help centers. JusticeCorps members make a commitment to national service by:

  • Assisting court staff with legal workshops
  • Helping self-represented litigants complete legal forms
  • Providing information and referrals
  • Offering language assistance to customers when necessary

JusticeCorps members work under the supervision of court attorneys. Since the program began in 2004, 1,700 members have successfully completed the program and have had the following impact:

  • Provided 490,000 instances of assistance in up to 24 different languages
  • Filed 330,000 legal documents
  • Completed more than 500,000 hours of national service

For more information about California's Justice Corps visit http://www.courts.ca.gov/justicecorps-about.htm. Illinois also utilizes Justice Corps students.

For more information on how to start a Justice Corps program, see Module 4 of the 2008 Court Solutions Conference materials.