Eskenazi, a 62-year-old restaurant manager, fell behind on rent after the restaurant closed and his wife also lost her job.
Eskenazi's landlord filed a dispossessory warrant in Glynn County Magistrate Court on Sept. 3, and Eskenazi didn't have an attorney to represent him in the eviction process, he told Law360.
Eskenazi, who couldn't afford an attorney, had never sought one out. He said he also didn't reach out to a free legal aid service because he thought his income from his full-time job meant he wouldn't qualify.
"My wife and I can't be without a place to live. I don't have the money to get another place," Eskenazi said.
"I don't have the money in the bank for a deposit" on new housing, he added. "I've got $4. Try to find a place with $4."
Unlike a criminal defendant, a civil defendant in Georgia does not have the right to an attorney if he cannot afford one. Eskenazi is among hundreds of thousands of low-income and rural Georgians each year who face civil legal matters like evictions and consumer debt without an attorney to guide them. So the state's Supreme Court is weighing a proposal to train and license non-attorneys to help close this civil justice gap.
Challenges in Accessing Civil Legal Services
The Georgia Supreme Court Committee on Legal Regulatory Reform found that a third of civil cases in the state's superior, state, probate and magistrate courts — or more than 420,000 civil cases in 2023 — had at least one self-represented party. About 1.4 million people — more than 13% of the state's population — who were living in poverty in 2023 had to face civil legal issues without legal services.
"This means that hundreds of thousands of Georgians attempted to resolve civil legal matters, including evictions, divorces, custody disputes, debt suits and issues relating to probate and estate, without an attorney," the committee said in a July report.
Most of the state's attorneys are concentrated in the Atlanta area, making the pool of attorneys smaller for people like Eskenazi, who live in less populated areas.
There are 159 counties in Georgia, but about 70% of the state's attorneys live and work in the five counties in and around Atlanta: Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett.
Seven counties, with 30,000 people in total, qualify as legal deserts, where there are no attorneys at all. There are 57 counties with 10 or fewer lawyers.
The housing team at the Georgia Legal Services Program, which provides free civil legal services to low-income people in the 154 counties outside the Atlanta area, can't serve all those who would meet the group's qualification requirement, which is an annual income that is 200% of the poverty limit, according to its executive director, Susan Coppedge, a longtime housing attorney.
"There's a great demand for this work because housing has gone up all across Georgia," said Coppedge, who was one of the court reform committee's 13 members. "In the metro areas, I know the price is very high, but in the rural areas, it's a shortage as well that's contributing to the high prices."
People going through an eviction can face additional crises, such as losing their job and having to move kids to different schools, according to Coppedge.
The nonprofit served people in 1,800 housing cases in 2024 and 2,200 cases in 2023, and its housing advice line handled 1,824 cases in 2024 and 1,664 cases in 2023, Coppedge said. Its rental assistance program, which handled more than 2,500 cases in 2024, is ending due to a lack of funds.
"There have even been cases where, when you lose housing, you may lose the ability to care for your children because the state comes in and says that you can't take care of a family if you don't have a roof over your head," Coppedge said.
Without an attorney, many people are facing an eviction proceeding in court without understanding what their rights are, according to Becca Wackym, the managing attorney of brief services intake at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society.
"They don't know that, for example, even though you file an answer to an eviction, that's not the end of the process," Wackym said, explaining that a tenant can be handed an immediate judgment in favor of the landlord if the tenant doesn't show up in court on the hearing date.
"Many, many, many cases go unanswered, and so you lose a lot of time in the process when that happens," Wackym added. "Just informing people of their rights gives them an opportunity for a softer landing, even if the end result is still that they're losing the current housing they live in."
A recent proposal from the Georgia court reform committee aims to help low-income and rural residents who represent themselves in civil matters in housing and consumer debt cases by looping in non-attorneys certified to provide legal guidance and assistance.
The committee's July report recommended that the state's high court adopt a three-year pilot program to certify non-attorneys as limited licensed legal practitioners. The pilot program would focus on housing and consumer debt because they're "high volume" matters and usually involve straightforward issues that many people face without legal representation, the report said.
The trained practitioners would guide people in an "assisted pro se model."
"Housing is just such a critical issue to families and to the infrastructure in our state that I think it's great that they started with housing," Coppedge said. "The need is demonstrable."
Coppedge said this pilot program would "expand our resources" because Georgia Legal Services' paralegals could qualify to be limited licensed practitioners.
Organizations that provide low-income Georgians with free legal counsel, including on housing and consumer debt cases, say the demand is greater than they can tackle with limited resources.
Wackym said the proposed position could improve the legal aid group's efforts.
"I think being able to have paralegals to reach more people and give advice about landlord-tenant issues and consumer debt issues would be huge, because it would free up our attorneys to give more of the complex advice," Wackym said.
Lea Staykoff, a senior paralegal at Atlanta Legal Aid who is among the 10 paralegals who help the housing program by answering calls and handling online appointments, said she doesn't see any sign of the calls slowing.
"The demand for housing especially is unbelievable, and it seems to only be getting higher as the months go by, and I suspect given current economic conditions will continue to get higher," Staykoff said. "Same with consumer [matters] as well. These are people that cannot afford services anywhere else."
Staykoff said Legal Aid's housing program would be more efficient if she could become a licensed practitioner and offer legal advice "on the spot."
"When we're overwhelmed and we don't have any appointments with our housing attorneys left to be advised and we have to start prioritizing, that's when you start to really notice the need for this kind of program," Staykoff said.
But, Coppedge said, "it's not just legal aid or lawyers that could oversee it."
Community partners throughout the state, including those already in rural areas, could also hire limited practitioners under the proposal, which would make Georgia the 12th state to offer some form of an assisted pro se model.
The Georgia committee proposed that its pilot program would require legal services providers or community-based organizations to employ or be affiliated with the limited practitioners. A practitioner would also need an educational background in the law, such as a paralegal's certificate, paralegal degree or a law degree, or they would need to have legal experience, such as serving as a paralegal.
The candidates would complete training in landlord-tenant and consumer debt laws, precedent and consequences, the Georgia committee said. They would need training in court rules and procedures, evidence, ethics and professional conduct.
Justice Carla Wong McMillian of the Georgia Supreme Court, the committee's chair, told Law360 Pulse in a statement that the committee recommended that the program start with a three-year pilot so they could look at the first two years' data to determine whether the pilot should be expanded.
"The committee recommended a phased pilot program because it would balance the need to show caution when permitting trained and credentialed non-attorneys to provide legal advice under certain circumstances with the urgent unmet legal needs of low-income and rural Georgians," Justice McMillian said.
She said the assisted pro se model doesn't propose allowing limited practitioners to appear in court to represent the clients or contact other parties regarding evictions or consumer debt cases.
"However, the report contemplates that after the initial pilot program, one of the issues that may be evaluated and studied is whether to expand the permitted activities of LLLPs," Justice McMillian said.
Legal Aid Groups Say Non-Attorneys Can Help
Legal aid leaders and attorneys working on housing matters told Law360 that they support the committee's proposal to license limited practitioners in eviction and consumer debt matters.
Kimberly Charles, deputy director at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, said her group sees a need for legal guidance and services on housing and consumer debt matters.
"One of the things that has always been a pain point for us is getting our clients help quickly and getting them the right level of legal assistance that they need," Charles said. "The demand is overwhelming. It's endless."
Coppedge had similar sentiments about not being able to serve everyone whose income does qualify them for free legal aid.
"We don't have enough resources for those people," Coppedge said. "Then there are those who are just over [the limit] who may not have money for an attorney because they're trying to find money to pay their rent, and so there's a whole additional group of people that this pilot program would help."
Coppedge said the proposal is "exactly" what the legal system should do, which is to respond to changing needs, "and certainly one of the greatest needs we see in the legal aid sphere is housing matters."
The proposal hasn't officially been adopted. A spokesperson for the state Supreme Court told Law360 that the court solicited feedback on its committee's final report through Oct. 2. The Supreme Court is reviewing the comments it received as well as the report's recommendations and is considering next steps, the court's spokesperson said.
For Eskenazi, being notified that his landlord was planning eviction was "depressing." He said he felt like he hit rock bottom when he withdrew money from his 401(k) savings account during the pandemic, leaving him without that safety net. He said he feels like they "can't get ahead of the game."
"We get our dogs' food and live on whatever is left," said Eskenazi, who has been living at the Brunswick house with his wife and their four dogs for two years. Although the house didn't have a fence, the landlord allowed them to put one up for their dogs.
"We picked this house because of the amenities," he said.
Eskenazi paid off the rent he owed for August, so his landlord canceled his eviction, including the court hearing that had been set for Sept. 29.
Eskenazi said he wasn't sure what resources, if any, were available to him to guide him in civil matters. When asked about the proposal, he said it couldn't hurt to have the program available.
--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo and Karin Roberts.
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