Pro Bono Spotlight: Reclaiming Access to Justice as a National Value

By: Andrew Sharp, Esq., Knowledge Strategy Manager, CARPLS; Executive Director, Legal Wellness Clinic

On June 19, 2026, the Obama Presidential Center opens its doors on Chicago’s South Side. The Center celebrates a presidency grounded in civic participation, dignity, and the idea that government can be a force for inclusion when it is designed to meet people where they are. As the legal profession reflects on that legacy, one part of it deserves renewed attention: the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Access to Justice.

Access to justice has never been a partisan concept. The inability to resolve a housing dispute, challenge an illegal fee, obtain benefits, or navigate a court process without counsel affects Americans across the political spectrum—urban and rural, red and blue. These are everyday legal problems, and when they go unaddressed, they escalate into deeper crises for families and communities.

The Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) was one of the most concrete federal efforts to confront this reality since the creation of the Legal Services Corporation in 1974. Developed during the Obama administration and formally established in 2016, ATJ served as a coordinating hub within the Department of Justice and across the federal government. It staffed and led the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR), which brought together nearly 30 federal agencies to align programs, funding streams, and policies around civil legal aid and access to justice efforts nationwide.[1] [2]

Through that work, ATJ helped elevate issues that practitioners have long understood. It advanced federal attention to fines and fees practices that trap people in cycles of debt and criminalization, producing research and guidance that highlighted constitutional and policy concerns with so‑called debtors’ prisons. It supported work on the civil right to counsel, language access, and court simplification—issues that determine whether people can meaningfully use legal systems at all.[3] [4]

ATJ also modeled what thoughtful federal leadership could look like in practice. As recently as 2025, the office was running a nationwide Access to Justice Prize Competition through Challenge.gov, awarding grants to innovative projects addressing the rural justice gap. Winners included courts, legal aid organizations, corrections agencies, and clinics piloting creative ways to deliver legal help where resources are scarce.[5] [6]

Today, that work appears to have stalled. Much of ATJ’s online presence has been moved to archived pages, and the office no longer appears to be operating as an active policy driver within DOJ. This is not the first erosion of the office; A2J's function has been diminished more than once over the past decade, despite bipartisan acknowledgment that the justice gap remains severe.

The cost of this absence is severe. During the COVID‑19 pandemic—when evictions surged, benefits systems broke down, and courts rapidly shifted procedures—there was no fully empowered federal A2J office positioned to coordinate legal aid response across agencies and jurisdictions. Reports produced through LAIR during that period documented the challenges, but coordination came late and unevenly.

Those challenges have not receded. Courts across the country continue to see growing numbers of self‑represented litigants. Increasingly, people are turning to generative AI tools to understand their legal problems, fill out forms, or decide what steps to take next.[7] At the same time, the federal government recently announced it is actively engaging in oversight of AI.[8] In this moment, the absence of a federal entity explicitly charged with centering access to justice—accuracy, equity, usability, and accountability for people without lawyers—is striking.

As we celebrate President Obama’s legacy with the opening of his Presidential Center, there is an opportunity to retrieve and renew this part of it. Revitalizing a federal Office for Access to Justice would not solve the justice gap on its own. But it would reestablish a national commitment to coordination, evidence‑based policy, and partnership with the legal aid and pro bono communities that do this work every day.

Access to justice is not an abstract ideal. It is the difference between rights that exist on paper and rights that can be exercised in real life. Reclaiming that commitment would be a fitting way to honor a legacy rooted in the simple, powerful idea that justice should belong to everyone.