Every year, hundreds of thousands of Marylanders walk into a courtroom alone. Not because they did anything wrong — but because they couldn’t afford a lawyer. In Maryland, that’s an estimated 461,000 civil cases where one side has representation and the other doesn’t. Nationally, only one party has an attorney in roughly 75% of the 20 million civil cases filed each year. The outcomes in these mismatched cases are rarely fair: people lose homes, custody, and access to benefits not because the law was against them, but because they didn’t know how to navigate it. 

Maryland is now taking a serious look at a solution that nearly 20 other states have already begun to adopt: building new tiers into the legal profession itself. 

The Task Force Behind the Movement 

In September 2024, the Innovations in Tiered Legal Services Task Force launched as a joint effort between the Maryland Judiciary, the Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA), and the Maryland Access to Justice Commission (A2JC). It’s co-chaired by Maryland Supreme Court Justice Hon. Angela M. Eaves, former MSBA President M. Natalie McSherry, and A2JC Executive Director Reena K. Shah. 

The Task Force builds on findings from the earlier Affordable Law Task Force, which found that roughly 40% of Marylanders — including those below the federal poverty line and the “ALICE” population (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — working people who still can’t absorb a legal bill) — cannot afford a lawyer at market rate. Its work is organized across five committees: Outreach, LP Scope, LP Education, Community Justice Workers, and Legal Technology. Findings and recommendations were expected by spring 2026. 

Two New Roles, One Goal: Meeting People Where They Are 

The Task Force is exploring two complementary, non-attorney roles modeled on innovations already working in healthcare and in other states: 

Legal Practitioners (LPs). Think of this as the legal world’s version of a Nurse Practitioner. An LP would be trained, tested, and licensed to handle specific, high-need areas of civil law — landlord-tenant disputes, family law matters, debt collection defense — without requiring a full law degree or bar admission. The model lets people get qualified help faster and at lower cost, while reserving the most complex matters for fully licensed attorneys. 

Community Justice Workers (CJWs). Modeled after the well-established Community Health Worker role, CJWs are trusted members of the communities they serve — people who already work in community organizations or civil legal aid settings and are upskilled to provide a defined scope of civil legal help. The phrase used to describe their value is simple and powerful: they “bring law to where the people are.” Rather than waiting for someone to find their way to a legal aid intake line, CJWs work inside the community organizations, churches, and neighborhood networks that people already trust. 

This isn’t a hypothetical experiment for legal aid organizations. Alaska Legal Services Corporation has already built out a Community Justice Worker program demonstrating how the model works in practice — training community members to provide direct, supervised legal assistance in rural and underserved areas where attorneys are scarce. 

Why This Matters for Legal Aid Organizations 

For organizations doing the day-to-day work of civil legal aid, a tiered system isn’t just a policy abstraction — it’s a capacity question. Most legal aid nonprofits already operate at a fraction of the staffing needed to meet demand. A CJW model offers a way to extend an organization’s reach without requiring every point of contact to be a licensed attorney. It also formalizes and credentials work that community-based staff are often already doing informally: helping a neighbor understand an eviction notice, walking someone through a benefits denial letter, explaining what a court date actually means. 

For legal aid leadership, the CJW and LP models also raise real operational questions worth thinking through now, before any formal program exists: 

• What’s the appropriate scope of practice, and what’s the clear line where a case must be escalated to an attorney? 

• What training, supervision, and quality assurance structures will organizations need to build? 

• How does this affect liability, malpractice coverage, and funder requirements? 

• Could this become a sustainable career pathway — and even a pipeline into the legal profession — for community members already embedded in the work? 

Tiered legal services won’t close Maryland’s justice gap by themselves, and they’re not without debate — some in the profession raise legitimate concerns about quality control and unauthorized practice of law boundaries. But the alternative — leaving hundreds of thousands of Marylanders to navigate eviction court, custody disputes, or benefits appeals entirely alone — isn’t a neutral status quo. It’s a choice with consequences that fall hardest on people who already have the least room to absorb them. 

If Maryland follows roughly 20 other states in formally adopting some version of this model, it won’t replace attorneys or legal aid organizations. It will extend their reach — putting trained, trusted help closer to where people actually live, work, and run into legal trouble in the first place.