This page compiles datasets that may be of use to people working on justice and poverty innovation. Please let us know if you have any links or datasets that are open for researchers and developers who are working on access to justice.
These are collections of data about poverty, legal needs, court processes, and life problems, and other things that might be useful to class projects.
Data on Justice Innovation and Legal Aid Work
Legal Services Corporation Grant Activities reports, 2008-2015, stored on Data.gov, https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/legal-services-corporation-grant-activities-reports-2008-2015
Legal aid grantee work, pro bono, and tech from Legal Services Corporation, on their Tableau Public workbooks of data visualizations: https://public.tableau.com/profile/legal.services.corporation#!/
General Data on Poverty and Inequality
US Census Poverty Datasets: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/data/datasets.html,
- 2017 US Census data on Income and Poverty in the United States: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2018/demo/income-poverty/p60-263.html
- along with Poverty Data tools https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/data/data-tools.html
Opportunity Insights Data Library: https://opportunityinsights.org/data/, This data collection has publicly available data about social mobility, exposure to innovation, life expectancy, income, and other factors related to poverty and opportunity.
American Community Survey, from the US Census Bureau, especially looking at Tables S1701,S1703, S1903, S2301: https://data.census.gov
Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), US Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/saipe/#/?map_geoSelector=aa_c
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics: https://data.bls.gov/lau
Economic Policy Institute, Economic Indicators: https://www.epi.org/indicators/
General Court + Justice System Data
US Department of Justice data inventory, with many different public datasets https://www.justice.gov/open/inventory.php
Bureau of Justice Statistics data on prisons, jails, law enforcement, parole, crime victims, state criminal courts, and other points of data: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dca
Court Statistics Project with details on state court caseload, composition, and other data https://www.courtstatistics.org/
Civil Justice Survey of State Courts: from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, last data available — 2005, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=242,
- The supplemental survey of Civil Appeals: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=402.
- See an alternative listing at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data,
- which also includes the publications that have referenced the Civil Justice Survey, https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/series/71/studies.
Measures for Justice criminal justice system datasets: https://measuresforjustice.org/portal/
Gapminder Data Library: https://www.gapminder.org/data/
Supreme Court Database at Washington University in Saint Louis, with information about each case — the parties, the justices’ votes, the legal provisions at issue, etc. http://scdb.wustl.edu/
Maryland Judiciary case data: https://cluesearch.org/ scraped by Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service
Legal Needs & User Research on Justice Journeys
The 2022 Justice Gap survey and report: https://justicegap.lsc.gov/ See the most recent survey results from the Legal Services Corporation of low-income Americans, about what justice problems they have and what resources they are able to use to resolve them
2019 IAALS/HiiL U.S. Justice Needs survey results, for all (not just low-income) Americans, about what legal problems they experience and services they use https://iaals.du.edu/projects/us-justice-needs
The 2017 Justice Gap legal needs report: https://www.lsc.gov/sites/default/files/images/TheJusticeGap-FullReport.pdf Legal Services Corporation, the Congressionally-funded group commissioned a 2017 research study into the most common civil legal needs of people in the US
State of the State Courts survey of people’s opinions about the court system and justice resolution, from the National Center of State Courts: https://www.ncsc.org/consulting-and-research/areas-of-expertise/leadership-and-governance/state-of-the-state-courts
Reddit/Legal Advice posts: Our team at Stanford, working with Suffolk LIT Lab, has been collecting and labeling people’s stories about legal problems. You can see this labeled data here at our Learned Hands Project Hub
Housing + Eviction Datasets
Census Household Pulse Survey Eviction/Foreclosure Risk: https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/hhp/#/?measures=EVICTFOR
LSC’s Eviction Laws Database: https://www.lsc.gov/initiatives/effect-state-local-laws-evictions/lsc-eviction-laws-database
LSC’s Eviction Tracker: https://www.lsctracker.org/summary
Eviction Lab’s Data about court filings: https://evictionlab.org/map/
Anti-Eviction Mapping + Data in Bay Area, California: https://www.antievictionmap.com/
Harvard State of Nation’s Housing data: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/state-nations-housing-2022
Who Owns What in NYC, from the tech non-profit JustFix: https://whoownswhat.justfix.nyc/
Data on consumer and corporate law
Consumer Complaint Database in the US, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/
Credit card agreement database, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, https://www.consumerfinance.gov/credit-cards/agreements/
Financial well-being survey data, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/financial-well-being-survey-data/
Data on Policies, Access, and Rule of Law (big trends)
Rule of Law Index: http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/ , The World Justice Project constructs worldwide surveys about people’s legal needs and their ability to use the justice system.
Colombian Government Data on access to justice: http://formularios.dane.gov.co/Anda_4_1/index.php/home