Navigating Justice

According to Zachary Zarnow, the legal system isn’t working for everyday people. When nonlawyers encounter a law-related issue, such as fighting eviction or pursuing an employer for wage theft, they find the court system unnavigable, he says.

In that vein, Zarnow has spent the bulk of his career trying to make the legal system easier to handle.

In July, Zarnow became executive director of Pro Bono Net, a nonprofit focused on building ways to streamline the legal system and expand access to legal aid. Part of the organization’s mission, Zarnow says, is to create technology solutions, such as apps, by working with partners to help simplify legal processes.

“There’s this notion that there’s a legal system with a set of rules we’re all supposed to play by, but the not-so-secret secret is that the system was designed for lawyers, and the majority of people who use the system are not lawyers,” Zarnow says. “That’s a terrible mismatch.”

Before heading Pro Bono Net, Zarnow was the deputy man-
aging director of the access-to-justice team at the National Center for State Courts. He worked with court systems to improve the experiences of litigants representing themselves so they could better guide themselves through.

Samira Nazem, interim deputy managing director of NCSC’s access-to-justice team, worked with Zarnow for almost four years at NCSC and describes him as “committed not just to pursuing new solutions, but also to fixing the underlying systems that will make those new solutions better.

“He’ll talk to anyone about access to justice, why it matters and why they should care just as deeply about it as he does,” Nazem says. “He’s brought countless people into this tiny little corner of the legal community and helped them find excitement and purpose in this work.”
Zarnow also co-created Tiny Chats, short-form educational videos for court staff discussing legal topics. Described as “bite-sized legal insights,” the videos featured interviews with court officials explaining concepts like debt collection, expungement and evictions.

In 2016, Zarnow became the program director at the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, where he worked to increase access to justice for Illinois residents. During that time and afterward as a contractor, he built and managed the Illinois Armed Forces Legal Aid Network, a pioneering statewide hot-
line and network of legal aid providers for veterans.

Born in Costa Mesa, California, Zarnow graduated from Brandeis University in 2006 and then spent two years in the U.S. Peace Corps working on anti-corruption initiatives and community justice in Ukraine. He decided to further his work in public interest law and attended American University Washington College of Law, graduating in 2012.

Zarnow worked for the Council for Court Excellence to manage a grant-funded yearlong evaluation of the jury system in Washington, D.C., before moving to Chicago to work at the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation.

While at the NCSC, Zarnow also helped secure $11.5 million for the Eviction Diversion Initiative, a grant program he helped design for state and local courts to create or improve eviction diversion programs.

Zarnow also teaches access to civil justice as an adjunct at Columbia Law School and co- teaches an access-to-justice class at Wesleyan University with Alyx Mark, his wife.

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