2ND EDITION · MARCH 2027 · Published by The Blackstone Project
Access to Justice Index
A number per county for whether someone without a lawyer can get through the justice system in it — held to the same method every year.
Cite as
The Blackstone Project at North Carolina Law, Access to Justice Index (2d ed. 2027)
Formats
web · pdf · csv
all free, all citable
all free, all citable
The Blackstone Project
Studies in the Law of North Carolina
An imprint of North Carolina Law
6
Counties covered in this edition
1 of 6
Counties with no full-time local legal aid office
63%
Average share of eviction defendants appearing without counsel
3 of 5
Counties with an improved score since the 1st edition
Method is unchanged from the 1st edition, still frozen 2025-09-01 — nothing here required restating a prior year. Coverage grew from five counties to six as Buncombe County was published in the North Carolina Courts section; Buncombe carries no year-over-year comparison, since this is its first appearance in the Index.
County data
| County | Local aid offices | Pro se (eviction) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buncombe | 1 | 58% | New |
| Cumberland | 1 | 63% | -1pt |
| Dare | 0 | 72% | +3pt |
| Mecklenburg | 1 | 55% | unchanged |
| Swain | 1 | 69% | -5pt |
| Wake | 1 | 58% | -3pt |
Why an index and not a report
A number per county, held to the same method every year, gives every local paper, county commission and legal aid board something to argue about. A narrative report gets read once. An index is the more useful civic object.
The rule that protects it
The method is frozen and published before data collection begins. If the method changes in a later edition, both years are restated under the new method rather than left inconsistent — a comparison across years is only honest if the ruler didn’t change.
access-to-justice-index-2027 · 2nd edition
published 2027-03-15 · method frozen 2025-09-01
sources: NC Administrative Office of the Courts · Legal Aid of North Carolina · NC State Bar
all underlying data released as csv
grew out of the Access to Justice research programme
read the 1st edition (2026-03-16)
published 2027-03-15 · method frozen 2025-09-01
sources: NC Administrative Office of the Courts · Legal Aid of North Carolina · NC State Bar
all underlying data released as csv
grew out of the Access to Justice research programme
read the 1st edition (2026-03-16)
North Carolina Law · Public legal information
Reviewed
2027-03-15
Editor
The Blackstone Research Council
Supersedes
1st edition (2026)