Research, Sources and Methodology Statement

The Arkansas Access to Justice Commission obtained the data presented in this website from a variety of sources:

• State Representatives:
  http://www.arkansas.gov/house/reps.php

• State Senators:
  http://www.arkansas.gov/senate/senators.php

• Arkansas Legal Aid Offices: http://www.arlegalservices.org/Home/PublicWeb/LegalSvcs/CountyMap

• U.S. Census Statistics (Population Profile):
  http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

• Foreclosure Rankings: When specific numbers are attributed to counties, the statistics were taken from the following website: TalkBusiness.net. Where more general rankings are used, the information was taken from RealtyTrac.com ( an online source of foreclosure statistics).

• Bankruptcy Data was taken from the website of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas: http://www.arb.uscourts.gov/courtinfo/2008.html.
  
  October 2008 was the most recent month in which data had been gathered by the Court. The Court does not collect bankruptcy data in each county. Rather, it collects bankruptcy data in 11 cities for those cities and their surrounding regions. Therefore, we attributed each region’s bankruptcy statistics to the counties covered by the nearest legal aid office(s) based on its proportion of the total population.

• The number of residents in each county living at or below 125% of the federal poverty level: http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en.

• The two non-profit law firms in Arkansas—Legal Aid of Arkansas and the Center for Arkansas Legal Services—gathered the following data:
  • Total number of legal aid cases in each county.
  • Top legal aid case types in each county.
    
    
• The number of legal aid cases per 1,000 citizens in each county living at or below 125% of the federal poverty level was calculated by the following equation:
  • (Number of legal aid cases in the county ÷ Number of people in the county living at or below 125% of the federal poverty level) × 1,000
    
    
• The ratio of residents in each county who qualify for free legal aid to that county’s total population was calculated by the following equation:
  • The county’s total population ÷ Number of people in the county living at or below 125% of the federal poverty level

For additional information about this research or to learn more about the Equal Justice Watch Project and Arkansas Access to Justice Commission contact us here.

Our Mission 
Encouraging Arkansas Leaders to Uphold Equal Justice