Help for people who have to represent themselves in civil matters has taken on a new look, and it's not a suit.

Students at the University of Georgia⁠—working with professors and Athens area volunteer lawyers⁠—launched a website this month to help pro se litigants learn the terms and find the forms they need. The website complements a legal clinic in the courthouse⁠—and popup clinics in the community⁠—teaching a do-it-yourself approach to addressing needs such as protective orders, divorce, child support and establishing parental rights and responsibilities, the university said in an announcement.

It's the kind of solution Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton called for in his annual State of the Judiciary address at the Capitol Wednesday.

"We must continue to do better to ensure that all Georgians—rich and poor—have access to justice," Melton said. He noted it was six years ago in the same annual address when then-Chief Justice Hugh Thompson pronounced that Georgia's judicial system was "sound and strong … for those who can afford a lawyer."

Thomson pointed to the growing number of rural counties with no—or only a few—lawyers. That gap has only grown in the years since, despite the State Bar of Georgia's repeated efforts to address it.

"Today, the number of self-represented Georgians coming to our courts has reached well over 1 million," Melton said. "They include the mom-and-pop grocery store owner with a contract dispute, the father dying from cancer who must finalize guardianship for his young children, our wounded warriors returning from battle who can't access the disability benefits our government has promised, and our elderly citizens, who have numerous legal needs, including the fundamental need to protect their own safety and health."

The trend leads to poorer success rate for the individuals and headaches for the court, he noted.

"When people represent themselves, their unfamiliarity with the law and court procedures often results in frustration for all involved, rescheduled and protracted hearings, and other inefficiencies that consume valuable state and local resources," Melton said. "Our legal system is an adversarial system; people win and lose. Citizens who represent themselves, more often lose."

Efforts to encourage more lawyers to locate in rural areas with fewer economic opportunities failed flat. Legislation to offer law school tuition pay back never made it to the floor for a vote. The best solution those who've studied the problem have offered is do-it-yourself help⁠—increasingly made possible by technology.

Melton said he will appoint a committee led by judges to "explore and promote best practices for refashioning law libraries across the state to meet today's needs." He pointed to self-help resource centers such as the ones court law librarians have created in Fulton and Dougherty counties. He offered a vision of existing and underused law libraries as "a place where citizens will gain greater access to our legal system."

The same need led a group of University of Georgia students to partner with the volunteer organization Athens Access to Justice to offer technology-based solutions. The students worked through a semesterlong capstone project in the New Media Institute, part of Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

John Weatherford of the new media faculty guided the team, working with University of Georgia School of Law Associate Dean Eleanor Lanier. Lanier is co-founder of Athens Access to Justice. Lanier leads clinical programs for the law school and co-founded the volunteer lawyers group called Athens Access to Justice. She was quoted in the university's announcement about building the new website.

"These students are super bright and committed. They picked up the challenges pretty quickly," Lanier said. "I thought of them as consultants who have information and expertise. The fact that they were learning at the same time is great."

The resulting work can be seen on the website athensaccesstojustice.org.