The growing number of low-income Georgians who cannot afford a lawyer is resulting in unfair civil trials and unjust outcomes, the state’s chief justice said Wednesday.

“We must guarantee access to justice for all people, as our laws were not made for just a few,” Chief Justice Hugh Thompson told the General Assembly in his annual State of the Judiciary speech.

Indigent criminal defendants are entitled to lawyers and get them through the state’s public defender system. But the poor who must appear in court in civil matters have no such right to counsel.

Almost 2 million Georgians, or 19 percent of the state’s population, live below the poverty line. Their legal needs are varied and often involve fundamental rights, the chief justice said.

Such cases include the woman who needs a protective order to shield her children and herself from an abusive husband; the guardianship of young children of a single dad who’s dying of cancer; and the education or disability benefits for a wounded soldier returning from war, Thompson said. “The elderly have many legal needs” as well, “involving their safety, their health care and their recourse when they are defrauded of everything they own.”

The legal system is an adversarial system of justice, Thompson said. “The reality is that poor people who represent themselves often lose.”

Legal aid societies and volunteer groups across the state are helping indigent Georgians resolve their court disputes, Thompson said. “But we need to do better than depend upon piecemeal efforts to plug the dam from a flood” of litigants who are appearing in courts without lawyers.

Thompson also thanked Gov. Nathan Deal for his support and the Legislature for its appropriation of $11 million for new accountability courts that require criminal defendants to work, stay sober and get treatment. There are now 102 such courts in Georgia with more on the way, the chief justice said.

Eighty-five percent of the courts’ participants have jobs when they graduate, and 93 percent remain free of criminal charges three years after graduation, Thompson said. “The undeniable truth is: These courts work. They keep our communities safer. They save lives.”

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