On May 8, the State Bar of Wisconsin's Board of Governors approved all 12 recommendations from the recently-released report of the state bar's Access to Justice Study Committee, "Bridging the Justice Gap: Wisconsin's Unmet Legal Needs."

The report found that 80 percent of poor households--more than 500,000 Wisconsinites--are forced to confront legal problems without the help of a lawyer. The report contained 12 recommendations for how various state actors can begin addressing the problem, including:

• The state supreme court, in cooperation with the governor, legislature, and state bar, should establish a permanent access to justice commission to supervise the long-term effort to increase funding;
• The state legislature should provide enough state funding to ensure that legal services are provided to clients being turned away simply due to lack of resources;
• The state legislature should fund self-help centers connected to every courthouse in the state.

Various committees of the state bar will now meet to begin discussing how to properly implement these recommendations.

Wisconsin's legal needs study was released on March 9, 2007. See the LSC Updates article "Wisconsin's Justice Gap" from March 29.

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