The Justice Gap: The Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans (2022)

Used in 2 entries

For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.

1. [1] Appeal vs accept Decision · inaction side

   Statistic

   92% of civil legal problems of low-income Americans receive no or inadequate legal help; legal aid organizations must decline approximately half of all requests due to resource constraints

   “"For 92% of their substantial civil legal problems, low-income Americans do not get the legal help they need. Legal aid organizations receiving LSC funding must decline approximately half of all requests due to insufficient resources, leaving an estimated 1.4 million problems annually without adequate assistance."”

   Calculation notes

   The inaction rate is the hardest to anchor for this entry. No survey directly asks appellate-eligible litigants whether they regret not appealing. The LSC Justice Gap report establishes that access constraints prevent a large share of low-income Americans from pursuing legal remedies altogether. The 0.30 rate is a conservative expert-consensus proxy drawn from access-to-justice literature: roughly one-third of adverse judgments are estimated to go uncontested not from acceptance of the outcome but from cost barriers, lack of counsel, or unawareness of appellate rights. This is the weakest number in this entry and should be treated with significant uncertainty. The rate could plausibly be anywhere from 0.15 to 0.50 depending on case type, income level, and legal representation. This entry should be read as directional rather than precise on the inaction side.
   

   Source date: 2022-04-01 · Accessed: 2026-05-09

2. [2] Litigate vs settle Decision · inaction side

   Statistic

   92% of the civil legal problems of low-income Americans received no or inadequate legal help; 74% of those who experienced a substantial problem received no legal help at all

   “"Low-income Americans will face approximately 1.7 billion civil legal problems per year. For 92% of their substantial civil legal problems, low-income Americans do not get the legal help they need. 74% of low-income adults who experienced a civil legal problem in the prior year received no legal help whatsoever for their most serious problem."”

   Calculation notes

   Legal Services Corporation contracted NORC at the University of Chicago for a nationally representative survey of approximately 5,000 US adults below 125% of the federal poverty line. The 74% figure measures the share of people with a substantial civil legal problem who received zero legal help — not purely regret, but the share who took no action and were left without resolution. This is the best available proxy for inaction regret: the overwhelming majority of people with real civil legal problems never engaged the legal system at all. The broader 92% "no or inadequate help" figure encompasses partial help. We use 0.74 as the inaction regret proxy rate because it represents total non-engagement — the clearest analog to "did not pursue the claim."
   

   Source date: 2022-04-01 · Accessed: 2026-05-09