Access to justice is for al

Six years ago, members of Utah's legal community took a novel approach to ensure that a greater number of Utah's poor and disabled had better access to the judicial system to address civil matters such as landlord-tenant disputes, family law and accessibility issues, to name a few.

The "And Justice for All" campaign has asked attorneys to give the equivalent of two billable hours a year to the cause. Many Utahns have contributed generously to the campaign, which primarily distributes the funds among the Disability Law Center, Legal Aid Society and Utah Legal Services. However, the campaign also funds programs that provide legal services to other underserved populations such as the Multi-Cultural Legal Center, the Navajo Nation's-DNA, People's Legal Services and Holy Cross Ministries Legal Immigration Program.

More than 80 percent of these funds come from the legal community itself. For some contributors, the campaign has become institutionalized — firms and individual donors now build these gifts into their annual budgets. More than $2.1 million has been raised during the first five years of the effort.

This bespeaks the remarkable success of the effort. In 2003, some 28,946 people received legal assistance from the Disability Law Center, Legal Aid Society and Utah Legal Services. This is a marked increase over 1998, when 16,230 people were served by the three agencies.

The number of clients served has also increased because the three agencies made the decision to co-locate in the nation's first Community Legal Center. This accomplishment was made possible by a separate capital campaign of nearly $4 million. The move has saved nearly $400,000 in rent among the agencies, money that has been redirected to serve more clients with legal needs.

The Deseret Morning News has championed this campaign since its inception. We again congratulate members of Utah's legal community and others for their financial and in-kind gifts that help ensure Utah's needy have access to legal services in civil matters.

We also highlight this campaign because access to justice is a societal concern. Utahns can help. obviously, by contributing to the "And Justice for All" campaign. (For more information, go to www. andjustice

forall.org. Equally important is the public developing an awareness that in a free society, access to justice is a fundamental right.

As Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham observed in her State of the Judiciary address to the Utah Legislature last month, "The responsibility for guaranteeing and protecting (access to justice) does not lie only with the courts and lawyers. It belongs to all who aspire to live in a just society."

As Durham notes, access to justice is a shared responsibility.