The California Supreme Court has asked the State Bar to gather public comment on a proposed rule that would establish a Community Justice Worker Program. The rule would permit nonattorneys who complete specialized training to provide limited legal services while working under the supervision of approved legal aid organizations. The petition behind the proposal, submitted in December by California legal aid groups, framed the program as a response to what they called an access-to-justice crisis in the state.
For the ARM industry, the most consequential detail sits in the petition’s own examples of the work these nonlawyers would perform. Alongside advising tenants facing eviction and survivors seeking protective orders, the petition specifically cites helping a consumer answer a debt collection complaint. Default judgments remain the predominant outcome in collection litigation, largely because most defendants never respond. A pipeline of trained, supervised nonlawyers aimed at lifting answer rates could meaningfully raise the share of contested accounts.
Under the proposal, the Supreme Court would designate an authorizing body to accept, review, and approve applications from legal services organizations seeking to run programs. Those organizations would train and certify workers who are at least 18 and hold a high school diploma or equivalent. Community justice workers could not charge fees, could not hold themselves out as licensed attorneys, and would have to operate strictly within a certified scope of practice. Communications with clients would carry the same privilege protections as the attorney-client relationship.
The State Bar would maintain a public roster of authorized organizations and their active workers, and would report annually to the Legislature and the court on complaints involving the workers and how those complaints were resolved.
The bar’s call for comment noted that comparable programs already operate in Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington, D.C. A District of Columbia program launched earlier this year focuses on civil litigants without counsel in housing, family, and financial matters.
The court set a 45-day comment period and said it would decide afterward whether to adopt the rule, with or without changes.
