Access to Justice Prize

The Access to Justice Prize is a prize competition to promote innovative solutions 
to address the access to justice crisis.

The 2025 Prize focuses on solutions that impact rural communities.

July 10, 2025 Update

The 2025 Access to Justice Prize competition, as announced on January 7, 2025, has been modified. The Prize competition is condensed and will no longer include Phase 2 or the Grant Prize submission stage. The Department of Justice will select the Prize winners based on the applications received by the March 31, 2025 submission date. Each winner will receive $15,000 to advance their project delivering innovative solutions to close the rural justice gap.

Winners will be announced by July 25, 2025.

Overview

The Office for Access to Justice is pleased to announce the Access to Justice Prize, a prize competition to advance the innovative solutions that are urgently needed to address the widespread justice gap and increase access to justice for all. The Access to Justice Prize seeks to support leaders on the front lines of the access to justice crisis to develop these strategic solutions. Your innovative ideas are likely to be the most effective because of your visibility into specific barriers and gaps, your connection to impacted communities, and your understanding of available resources and tools.

In line with this purpose, the Access to Justice Prize invites community-based and non-profit organizations; academic institutions; and local, state, tribal and territorial governments—including courts, public defender offices, and prosecutorial agencies—to submit proposals for an innovative idea to expand access to justice. The Access to Justice Prize competition has a one-year prize cycle, from January to December, with two judging rounds. At the first round, a number of finalists will be selected and awarded a finalist prize of $5,000. The finalists will further develop their submission during a six-month Refinement Phase and will then compete in a final round judging competition—the Access to Justice Prize Showcase—for the grand prize of $50,000.

For 2025, the Access to Justice Prize invites applicants to submit an innovative idea to expand access to justice within a rural jurisdiction and/or community. An innovative idea that would “expand access to justice” means an idea that expands access, accelerates innovation, or safeguards the integrity of civil or criminal legal systems. This could include ideas that would seek to improve legal systems, processes, interactions or outcomes, or to better solve justice problems within rural areas or for rural communities.

2025: Closing the Rural Justice Gap

In 2025, the Access to Justice Prize focuses on closing the justice gap across rural America, continuing the ongoing work of the Office for Access to Justice to engage with and support rural communities in closing the justice gap.

Access to justice barriers are often exacerbated for rural Americans, and the unique and complex hurdles for people living in rural areas—long travel times, limited internet access, lack of attorneys, and more—are too often overlooked. When compared with their urban counterparts, rural Americans are more likely to have household incomes below the federal poverty line and they are more likely to face civil legal problems. In 2022, the Legal Services Corporation found that 77% of rural low-income households experienced at least one civil legal problem in the previous year, and 40% experienced at least five. Yet these households are even less likely to find the assistance needed to navigate these issues: Rural low-income Americans do not receive any or enough legal help for 94% of the substantial civil legal problems they encountered.

Similar challenges are found in the criminal justice systems in rural areas. Rural jurisdictions frequently rely on part-time judges and prosecutors as well as contract indigent defense counsel, which can result in ethical conflicts and diminished access to the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Small budgets and limited access to forensic and social services mean that criminal practitioners in rural areas may lack paralegal, investigative, and expert support that is routinely provided in urban jurisdictions. Studies demonstrate that recruitment and retention challenges are increasing for criminal justice careers in rural areas, including for prosecutors, public defenders and law enforcement.

Problems facing rural courts are increasing and are complex, including rapidly rising caseloads, delay, uneven workloads among judges, and lack of fiscal resources. Virtual hearings have expanded access in many areas, but do not always account for unique barriers in rural jurisdictions, including lack of necessary hardware, costs to litigants, or unreliable internet or phone service.

Solutions to the rural access to justice crisis must begin with rural communities themselves. Those who live and work in rural areas, and organizations that serve them, are best situated to recognize both the needs and the strengths of their local community, and to develop creative and impactful approaches to harness existing resources and respond to challenges effectively.

How to Enter & Find More Information

The proposal submission period for the Access to Justice Prize closed on March 31, 2025. The announcement of the finalists for the Access to Justice Prize has been postponed. Please continue to visit this page for updates.

For questions, email JusticePrize@usdoj.gov.