Vol. 32, No. 1, 11. The Wyoming Road to Equal Justice.

• Author: By Hon. Timothy C. Day

Wyoming Bar Journal

2009.

Vol. 32, No. 1, 11.

The Wyoming Road to Equal Justice

Wyoming Lawyer Issue: February, 2009 The Wyoming Road to Equal Justice By Hon. Timothy C. Day

The Wyoming Supreme Court established the Wyoming Access to Justice Commission on December 16, 2008. This is a monumental step on the road to equal justice in Wyoming. The creation of a formal commission to assess, develop and coordinate resources to provide civil legal aid for the poor, the near-poor, and the disadvantaged embraces the reality that those who cannot afford a lawyer cannot afford justice. Indigent litigants without counsel routinely forfeit basic rights due to the absence of counsel without regard to the facts or the law. This is not to say we are anywhere close to the ideal we seek to insure equal justice for all. In some respects not much has changed in the legal services landscape in Wyoming in the last several years, except for the worse. In December of 2001, the president's column of the Wyoming Lawyer painted a bleak picture of the unfinished business of insuring access to justice for all:

We have about fifteen lawyers in Wyoming Legal Services and the Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault serving the poor (in non-criminal matters) in Wyoming, a population of between 50,000 and 55,000. Although they handle over 3,000 cases per year, it is estimated they only meet twenty per cent of the need in the income eligible population.(fn1) That is about the national average according to the ABA. This is not to mention the underserved or the near-poor who are not poor enough to qualify for legal aid, but who cannot realistically afford a lawyer. Moreover, these programs to serve the poor can only accept certain kinds of cases due to restrictions of the federal funding they depend upon - funding that has been diminishing and is ever in jeopardy of extinguishment. There is no state funding. It is to be noted that Wyoming is one of only ten states that provide no direct State appropriations or court fees or fines for civil legal services. We are in the bottom third of the country in legal aid spending per capita for our poverty population. We now have even fewer legal aid service lawyers serving the same or greater eligible population, and there is still no reason to believe that we are meeting any more than...