Introduction to Symposium in New Directions in the Empirical Study of Access to Justice

This symposium focuses on the empirical investigation of access to civil justice. It is the outgrowth of a project that began with two A2J Empirical Methods Workshops I hosted in April 2014 and April 2015 at the University of Wisconsin Law School, with the support of the law school’s Institute for Legal Studies. The goal of these workshops was to bring together tenure-track and clinical faculty conducting research in the access to justice field and create a welcoming and supportive academic community where we could share and receive constructive feedback on our work. The A2J Empirical Methods Workshops have been intentionally intimate and informal small-group events, designed to promote the development of supportive and enduring professional bonds. The heart of these events has been the opportunity they provide attendees to workshop their works in progress in a setting where everyone has expertise in the field, reads all the drafts in advance, and provides detailed written critique of their work. At the 2014 workshop, we hosted participants working in the fields of law, sociology, social welfare, education, criminology, and political science. The theme of the 2014 workshop, “What Is Effectiveness? Building Theory and Exploring Measurement,” was influenced by an article in the Wisconsin Law Review, “Expanding the Empirical Study of Access to Justice,” by Catherine Albiston and Rebecca Sandefur (2013), who joined the workshop as special guests. Many of the participants in the inaugural workshop returned for the 2015 workshop, “From the Field: New Directions in the Empirical Study of Access to Justice,” which again brought together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. A third A2J Empirical Methods Research Workshop will take place at the University of Wisconsin Law School in October 2017. The published work generated by the workshops has been impressive. In addition to this symposium issue, other workshop achievements include a successful grant application with the National Science Foundation’s Law and Social Science