South Carolina Judicial Branch
Columbia, South Carolina

S.C. Access to Justice Commission Launches Justice Gap Report

COLUMBIA, S.C. (Sept. 20, 2021) – The South Carolina Access to Justice Commission introduced its inaugural report, Measuring South Carolina’s Justice Gap, during a Wednesday, Sept. 16 online event attended by judges, attorneys, court employees, service providers, and others in the South Carolina legal community. The event was recorded and a video replay is available at this link.

Access to Justice Commission Executive Director Hannah Honeycutt started the online event by welcoming attendees, reflecting on the purpose of the Commission, and introducing the event’s speakers. Supreme Court of South Carolina Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty then offered remarks, recognizing the Commission’s recent progress and thanking South Carolina’s civil legal assistance providers for their efforts.

“This cause is personal to me,” Chief Justice Beatty said. “At the start of my legal career, I worked for the Neighborhood Legal Assistance Program, but this cause started for me long before then. As a second-year law student I volunteered at Legal Services here in Columbia. During the summers, I worked for Legal Services in Spartanburg. At that time I made the commitment that I would join the Legal Services program somewhere in the state of South Carolina, to assist in the effort to provide legal assistance to those in need. I saw firsthand how difficult it is for individuals to navigate the legal system without representation. This job was so rewarding, both personally and professionally. I gained a lot of experience as a new lawyer. Equally important, I gained so much personal satisfaction in helping others. I felt like I was actually making a difference in the lives of so many. This commitment to access to justice has continued throughout my career. In fact, as Chief Justice, one of my strategic goals is to ‘Ensure access to justice for all regardless of income, disability, or language barriers.’ In the last four years, the Judicial Branch has made progress toward this goal.”

Commission members Will Dillard, an attorney with Belser & Belser, PA in Columbia, and Elizabeth Chambliss, a law professor and director of the NMRS Center on Professionalism at the University of South Carolina School of Law, worked for several years on developing the report. They discussed the data that was used to create the report and shared some of the report’s findings. They also shared information about the Commission’s new Interactive Data Tool, developed with support from the Legal Services Corporation and the NMRS Center on Professionalism, which provides insights into which South Carolina communities are most challenged when it comes to finding and providing legal representation to citizens. Some key findings in the report included the following:

• More than 35 percent of South Carolinians (approximately 1.7 million people) live below 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline, making them eligible for subsidized legal assistance. South Carolina Legal Services, our state’s largest provider of free legal aid, has the resources to employ an average of one attorney for every 21,000 people eligible for their services.
• Private attorneys are also scarce in South Carolina's rural counties: In 2020, 14 of our 46 counties had fewer than ten private practitioners and four counties had fewer than five. The report highlights, among other things, that as a result, South Carolina's courts are filled with unrepresented parties.
• Both sides have an attorney in only 27 percent of all adverse civil matters in Circuit Court. In fiscal year 2019, 99.7 percent of defendants in eviction cases, 92.3 percent of defendants in foreclosure cases, and 96 percent of defendants in debt collection cases were unrepresented.

In closing, Commission Chair and Supreme Court Justice John C. Few urged attendees to consider what they might do to help increase access to justice.

“If we don’t know exactly what justice is, we certainly know what justice is not. When such large segments of our society cannot access the justice system that our society has set up, then we know that is not justice,” said Justice Few. “This report shows hard data – real numbers from real people about the manner in which, and the degree to which, we are failing as a society to reach people in need. What we can take from this report is that there is a tremendous amount of work left to be done.”

Justice Few also announced the Access to Justice Commission’s next project: a comprehensive statewide civil legal needs assessment that will lend depth and breadth to the issues uncovered in the Justice Gap Report. This project is a partnership among the Commission, the South Carolina Bar, and the NMRS Center on Professionalism at the University of South Carolina School of Law. The needs assessment will be conducted by researchers from the Center for Housing and Community Studies at UNC Greensboro and will take place over the course of the next year.

Created by the Supreme Court of South Carolina in January 2007, the South Carolina Access to Justice Commission is charged with identifying civil legal needs and developing a long-term plan to provide these services for low-income South Carolinians. To continue learning more about the Commission, visit scaccesstojustice.org or follow on Twitter @SCATJ, and on Facebook and Instagram @scaccesstojustice.

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