Michigan Residents and the Justice Gap
At its core, MichiganLegalHelp.org is a website designed to provide free legal information for those who are representing themselves in their legal matters. In 2012, there was only one Michigan legal services attorney for every 21,625 residents who qualified for their services. This disparity between the demand for and availability of legal resources meant that many eligible residents had to be turned away. This “justice gap” is not only experienced in Michigan, but nationwide as well. According to the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), “low-income Americans will approach LSC-funded legal aid organizations for support with an estimated 1.7 million problems (2017). They will receive only limited or no legal help for more than half of these problems because of a lack of resources.” The individuals and families affected by this gap comprise Michigan Legal Help’s (MLH) ideal audience, and so the question is who is an average MLH visitor and how do they compare to the population experiencing this justice gap?MLH Visitors and Income Eligibility
Legal aid organizations funded by the Legal Services Corporation can typically serve households living at up to 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guideline. For a family of three in 2019, this would be an annual household income of $42,660. One way we can attempt to find out if MichiganLegalHelp.org’s visitors are representative of this population is to analyze the data from our Guide to Legal Help. The Guide to Legal Help is Michigan Legal Help’s triage tool that provides customized legal information and resources based on a visitor’s answers to a series of questions. The questions cover topics such as household income; the visitor’s legal issue; the visitor’s preference for finding an attorney, court forms, or legal information; and other demographic factors that may affect legal aid eligibility.From October 1, 2017, to February 28, 2019, 78,913 visitors recorded their income with the Guide to Legal Help and 79 percent of these visitors had household incomes at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. Depending on their type of legal issue and other eligibility factors, many of these visitors would go on to be referred to legal services. The staff at Michigan Legal Help take this statistic as a sign that we are largely reaching our target audience. That being said, not every visitor to MichiganLegalHelp.org uses the Guide to Legal Help, and not everyone that used it chose to record their income. During the time period stated above, more than 5,000,000 people visited MichiganLegalHelp.org. Although we realize it isn’t necessary for every visitor to use the Guide to Legal Help, we are currently making efforts to increase its use by visitors, which would result in a much larger sample of income data to analyze.
Legal Issues Experienced by the Visitor
Michigan Legal Help staff attorneys focus on the most common legal issues faced by visitors, both to make sure these areas are adequately covered and to prioritize the list of topics that still need to be addressed. We can get a sense of the most common legal issues faced by our visitors by revisiting the data collected by the Guide to Legal Help. From October, 1 2017, to February 28, 2019, the Guide to Legal Help was completed 62,801 times. Of these submissions, the top categories visitors sought help for were Family (55 percent), Housing (16 percent), and Money and Debt (10 percent). These categories also correspond to the most viewed categories of content on MichiganLegalHelp.org. For this same time period, the top five most viewed categories are Family (52 percent); Housing (12 percent); Money and Debt (10 percent); Personal Safety (6 percent); and Public Assistance (4 percent). According to the LSC’s Justice Gap Report, the most common areas of civil legal issues experienced by low-income households are Health; Consumer and Finance; Rental Housing; Children and Custody; Education; Disability; and Income Maintenance. Every one of these topics is covered at least in part by MichiganLegalHelp.org.Mobile Devices and Website Accessibility
MichiganLegalHelp.org was officially launched on August 17, 2012, and was optimized for mobile devices by June of 2013. The staff at MLH want to be sure that the tools and resources we provide are easily accessible to those who need them, and mobile devices play a vital role in this effort. According to the Pew Research Center, 31 percent of American adults making less than $30,000 a year are “smartphone dependent.” This means that they own a smartphone but do not have a home broadband connection. Not only does this low-income group have the highest percentage of smartphone dependency, but the data also indicates that smartphone dependency is inversely related to annual income. Smartphone dependency among U.S. adults was found to be 22 percent for those with an income of $30,000 - $49,999, 14 percent for those with an income of $50,000 - $74,999, and 9 percent for those with an income of $75,000 or more.It is also worth noting that smartphones seem to be the most popular type of device to own for the entire country. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2016 found that 84 pecent of American adults said their house contained a smartphone, while 80 percent said the same for a desktop, and 68 percent for a tablet. As for MichiganLegalHelp.org visitors in particular, about 57 percent of our users access the site via a mobile device, 38 percent use a desktop computer, and 5 percent use a tablet. These statistics confirm that mobile optimization deserves a firm place within Michigan Legal Help’s plan of action in promoting access to justice.
Profile of the Average MLH Visitor
Looking at this another way, if the average MLH visitor was just one person, who would they be? We can use data about MichiganLegalHelp.org’s visitors during the October 1, 2017, to February 28, 2019, time period to analyze this. Firstly, our average visitor would be a woman, as this describes about 62 percent of our total visitors. She would be 25 to 34 years old (34 percent of our visitors) and coming to MLH for the first time (70 pecent). She would be accessing our website with a mobile device (60 percent) and using a Chrome browser (54 percent). Her legal issue of interest would be in the Family category; more specifically, filing for divorce without minor children. This visitor would also have come to us “organically,” meaning she was not referred by another website. Furthermore, if she used the Guide to Legal Help, she would have a preference for either an attorney (30 percent) or legal information (30 percent), although court forms would be a close third option (29 percent). As mentioned earlier, this average visitor would also be living at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guideline, making her likely to receive a referral to some kind of free or reduced cost legal assistance program like the Counsel and Advocacy Law Line or the State Bar Modest Means Program.Overall it seems that the average MLH visitor and the ideal MLH visitor (those affected by the justice gap) seem very closely linked. However, there are ways in which MLH can improve. This includes continuing to create new content that addresses commonly experienced issues yet to be covered on the site. The Michigan Legal Help Program may also benefit from specifically targeting demographic groups that are more likely to be low-income, which according to the LSC are seniors, people with disabilities, veterans, and rural residents. It is quite encouraging how engaged low-income Michiganders already seem to be with MichiganLegalHelp.org, and the Michigan Legal Help Program will work to continue improving access to justice for this population.