By Kelsea Jeon
I’m in what is likely my final year of school — ever. I’m a 3L at Stanford Law, and as the days of classes dwindle, I’m savoring every bit of knowledge. One class in particular, Social Justice Impact Litigation, has been a highlight. We’ve been grappling with doctrinal, strategic and ethical questions around social justice lawyering — from how to choose plaintiffs and frame legal arguments to the role of coalition-building and movement lawyering. It’s one of the most practical courses I’ve taken in law school, offering insight into legal strategy that many doctrinal courses leave untouched.
What has made the class especially powerful is the range of guest speakers: civil rights leaders, immigrant rights organizers, government lawyers and judges. Hearing directly from practitioners at the forefront of justice work has expanded my thinking about how law interacts with social movements and systemic change.
I enrolled in the course with a question in mind: Why hasn’t impact litigation played a more central role in the civil access to justice movement? I thought about all the momentum and energy underlying landmark cases like Upsolve v. James and NAACP v. Wilson, which involve First Amendment challenges to the unauthorized practice of law. Rather than serving as the norm, however, these cases are the exceptions. Unlike in areas such as criminal justice or immigration reform, there is a paucity of litigation-driven reform in civil legal access to justice — even though it involves basic needs like housing, family law, debt collection and benefits.
That curiosity was challenged — and deepened — by a guest speaker last week, the founder of an immigrant advocacy organization. She explained that her organization operates from the ground up: its strategies are shaped directly by its members’ lived experiences and demands. They don’t decide what their members need — they ask. And they organize around the solutions that the members themselves envision.
Her comments made me realize a gap in how civil justice reform has been approached. The issue isn’t just the underuse of impact litigation in civil justice reform, but about how reform, generally, has been approached. We often talk about innovation in terms of new models: regulatory sandboxes, paraprofessional licensing, community justice workers, the expansion of civil Gideon or simplifying court procedures. These efforts are critical. But at the heart of all these reforms, there needs to be something deeper: a commitment to ensuring that reforms are rooted in the real needs, goals and voices of the people they are meant to serve. Top-down solutions alone cannot close the justice gap.
I’m still figuring out what role, if any, impact litigation might play in this space. Maybe it’s bringing structural challenges to court fees and fines that price people out of the civil legal system. Maybe it’s protecting the right to legal information and advice by community-based organizations. Maybe it’s building affirmative litigation strategies that remove barriers to self-representation for low-income litigants. There are many possibilities.
But one thing is clear: whatever strategies we pursue, they must be grounded in the communities most affected by the justice gap. Civil justice reform should not be built for communities — it must be built with them. Listening first, building trust and centering client voices are the key to any lasting change.
Kelsea Jeon is a 3L at Stanford Law, where she is a Civil Justice Fellow in the Rhode Center on the Legal Profession. She is a member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council.
From the Ground Up: Rethinking Civil Justice Reform was originally published in Justice Rising on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.