The Justice Narrative Project
Project Status: Messaging Guide Released; Seeking Funding for Messaging Campaign & National Media Strategy
Amplifying the Voices of Civil Justice
Every day, millions of Americans face problems shaping the course of their lives—someone at risk of losing their home, a family embroiled in a custody dispute, a sudden loss of income, overwhelming debt, domestic abuse. These aren’t abstract legal issues, they are challenges that affect where people live, how they support their families, if they feel safe, and whether they can move forward with stability and dignity.
In many cases, these problems end up in our justice system, more specifically our civil courts. A functioning civil justice system is not just a legal institution, it is civic infrastructure, as essential to a healthy society as good schools, hospitals, and roads. Yet for all its importance, the civil justice system remains largely invisible to most people—until a crisis forces them into it. And when they arrive, they too often find a system that wasn’t built for them.
The Imperative of Civil Justice
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Each year, Americans experience 260 million legal problems, with 120 million problems not reaching a fair resolution.
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Most people don't know what the civil justice system is, how it works, or that it exists to help them with their problems.
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Trust and confidence in the fairness of our civic institutions erodes when they feel inaccessible, confusing, or rigged.
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Unresolved civil justice issues can cascade into criminal justice issues—compounding personal and systemic problems.
The cost is real—to individuals and communities—when civil disputes aren't resolved, including increased homelessness, greater reliance on public services, disrupted education for children, poorer health outcomes, and weakened local economies.
A Moment of Opportunity
While many dedicated people are working to make the system more equitable, change in complex institutions is hard and progress can be slow. That work becomes easier when there is a broad understanding of what is at stake and a shared urgency to make improvements.
IAALS is leading the Justice Narrative Project to build a coordinated, high-level message on the imperative of civil justice—and catalyze civil justice champions to unite in how we frame its urgency.
In that effort, and in collaboration with stakeholders from across the civil justice ecosystem, IAALS has developed a messaging guide to help people understand why civil justice matters and why everyone has a role to play in building a system that works. This coordinated set of messages, materials, and tools will guide system stakeholders in building and sustaining the case for civil justice transformation.
This is not a story of a broken system with no way forward. It is a story of a system in need of renovation, where promising solutions exist and are ready to scale.
The way to accelerate and sustain this momentum requires a shared narrative, a common language, and a coordinated voice that elevates the urgency of civil justice improvement and inspires action across sectors.
The guide equips a broad swath of stakeholders with a coordinated, compelling, and adaptable set of messages about:
- The importance of the civil justice system as a civic infrastructure that stabilizes families, strengthens communities, and supports economic opportunity.
- The collective challenges within the system that are stated in honest, human, and persuasive terms that connect to people's real experiences.
- The urgent need for innovative improvement framed around hopeful momentum, emerging solutions, and the opportunity for everyone to participate.
Importantly, the guide does not prescribe a single script but a foundation for your specific communications and messaging goals. The civil justice landscape is vast and varied, and effective messaging should be adapted to local contexts, specific issues, and distinct audiences. In line with that goal, the guide provides a two-layered messaging framework for users to build upon:
- A universal, values-based frame built on the concepts of fairness, dignity, participation, and community impact—language that grounds the conversation in life problems people recognize and care about.
- Tailored sub-messages that can be adapted by sector (e.g. housing, health, labor, courts), by audience (e.g. funders, policymakers, the public, frontline workers, skeptics), and by local context.
This expansive resource also includes guidance on knowing and reaching your audiences and choosing your messenger, as well as go-to reference sheets and summaries:
Partners are encouraged to take and use these messages as presented or adapt them to their specific contexts. Local specificity, authentic storytelling, and voices from lived experience will always be more powerful than generic language.
More about the project and what's next
Our civil justice system is a foundational bedrock of society and plays a huge role in people’s lives, yet talking about the importance of civil justice is not easy. We need messages and stories that resonate broadly and elevate the imperative for reform—allowing us to achieve our mission of a civil justice system that is more just. To change our civil justice system and engage new and expansive audiences in this effort, we must better highlight the justice challenges people face, the broad access to justice gap, and the need to modernize an outdated system that is no longer equipped to resolve people’s legal problems.
When we improve civil justice, we improve community stability, income and asset growth, family well-being, and employment.
We improve people's lives.
Objectives
- Develop a coordinated, national, high-level message on the importance of our civil justice system, broad access to justice, and the critical need for justice system improvement.
- Develop a messaging campaign and supportive national media strategy to share this messaging and increase awareness and action on the part of changemakers and funders.
- Develop a coordinated set of messages, materials, and tools for local and state efforts to pick up, build on the national efforts, and use over time in support of their work.
Through the Justice Narrative Project, IAALS is giving voice to the imperative of civil justice, collaborating with national stakeholders—including perspectives from the public and legal-adjacent community partners—and developing the messages and strategies that civil justice champions can rely on.
IAALS is seeking funding to take the shared messaging and guide an important step further: an amplified, national messaging campaign and media strategy.
Project Team
Connect & Get Involved
Our work is only possible through purposeful listening and collaboration with people across the country. Everyone, from legal system stakeholders to members of the public, plays a critical role in our innovations. Together, we jumpstart the groundbreaking and achievable solutions that will clear a path to justice for everyone.