Montana Supreme Court Approves State Community Justice Worker Program

By Andrew Braun

Montana is expanding access to justice with the nation’s latest community justice worker program.

On March 27, the Montana Supreme Court authorized a program for Community Justice Workers — certified lay volunteers who aren’t attorneys — to provide limited legal services to address certain critical civil legal needs in the state.

Specifically, the Court’s order tasks the Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA) with training and mentoring community volunteers to assist eligible Montanans with critical orders of protection, and simple consumer and housing matters in certain local trial courts. The decision expands who can help deliver crucial legal resources in a state where rural divides and domestic violence are driving important justice access reform.

A Growing Trend in Access to Justice Reform

As the PBEye reported, community justice workers (CJWs) are a powerful tool for expanding legal services to more litigants in need. These volunteers are not barred attorneys, and instead are often employed in other sectors, such as healthcare, social work, and education, where they already encounter community members who may need legal resources. The CJWs are trained and supervised by entities, including local legal services organizations (LSOs). A CJW’s services may include reviewing documents or educating pro se litigants on how to complete steps in the judicial process. As PBI writes, the CJW model helps increase the number of professionals in the community capable of delivering legal aid to address critical legal needs.

Montana joins a growing number of states adopting community legal services solutions. Originally pioneered by the Alaska Legal Services Corporation, the CJW model has gained traction with a number of states, including Texas, California, Illinois, Utah, and Washington, D.C. During the PBI 2026 Annual Conference, PBI hosted a discussion on the transformative role of CJW models during its “From Barriers to Solutions: How Community Justice Workers Transform Justice” pre-conference session.

Why Montana Needs CJWs

In September 2025, MLSA filed a petition requesting that the Montana Supreme Court adopt rules authorizing certified CJWs to provide limited legal services in certain local trial courts. According to the MLSA’s filing, problems like Montana’s high rates of intimate partner violence, especially among the state’s Native American communities, create an urgent need for legal services, such as security orders of protection, that CJWs can provide. While organizations like MLSA already assist with these matters, the group says that the state’s demand for domestic violence-related legal services far outpaces available help. Montana’s new CJWs will be vital in addressing this challenge by drafting documents, providing legal advice, and representing petitioners for powerful Orders of Protection for survivors in court. Research from the Office of Justice Programs at the Department of Justice suggests that these protection orders can quickly and significantly reduce reported physical violence.

CJWs will also help low-income Montanans qualifying for legal services overcome barriers to obtaining much-needed help with regard to housing and domestic violence matters. Brianne Holland-Stergar, a visiting professor at the University of Montana School of Law, wrote to the state’s supreme court that funding and staffing shortages already restrict many pro bono and legal services attorneys from serving clients. As a result, Holland-Stergar says that “nearly half of all low-income Montanans have at least one civil legal problem that goes unaddressed,” including issues related to housing and domestic violence. MLSA will train CJWs to help low-income Montanans obtain free legal aid in these consequential proceedings.

Expanding who can help pro se litigants is decisive for bridging the justice access gap between rural communities like Montana’s where the justice access gap is especially pronounced. Many of the state’s rural residents occupy “legal deserts” where there are currently few or no attorneys. According to MLSA, 30 of Montana’s easternmost counties have just 79 combined active attorneys, or only one for every 2,386 residents. Meanwhile, most of Montana’s lawyers and law offices sit in more populous areas that are often hours away from these rural communities needing their services. The state’s new CJW program reduces the need for a barred attorney to help survivors with certain matters, filling the demand with a trained volunteer right from their own community.

Building support for CJWs

Barriers like the rural divide and domestic violence rates have been crucial for rallying professional support statewide for justice access reform in Montana. A 2024 survey by the State Bar of Montana found that 73% of its members agreed that the access to justice gap was a critical issue demanding urgent attention, while the majority agreed that low-income and rural residents were especially affected by the justice access problem. Over half of all respondents to the survey supported licensing community volunteers to help with housing and family matters. During the public comment period on the state’s CJW proposal, the state bar concluded that the proposed project was an innovative solution “to address the access-to-justice gap, particularly in rural Montana.”

The new CJW program builds on MLSA’s previous work to address the justice access problem in Montana. As noted in its petition to the Court, MLSA already partners with Alaska Legal Services Corporation’s Community Justice Worker Disaster Response Cohort to train community volunteers, working under a lawyer’s supervision, to help clients with public benefits matters. MLSA also operates its Tribal Advocacy Incubator Project (TAIP) that equips community volunteers to represent tribal members in their civil legal matters in tribal courts. The Montana judiciary’s Court Help Program, comprised of Self Help Centers at courthouses and libraries, provides self-represented civil litigants with information about their legal rights and responsibilities in court.

Next Steps

Montana’s authorization is just the beginning of the state’s development of a CJW program. The March 27 Court Order authorized a Working Group to make recommendations for selecting, training, supervising, certifying, monitoring, and evaluating the impact of CJWs, as well as proposing changes to rules and new regulations necessary to permit CJWs to practice in the state. The Working Group, which consists of representatives of the State Bar, MLSA, the state judicial branch, the state law school, and a county justice of the peace, must file their recommendations with the Montana Supreme Court within 45 days (by May 11) after which the Court may open up the proposal to public comment. The PBEye will continue to follow these developments.