The White House’s Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (with the DOJ’s National Institute of Justice and Office for Access to Justice, along with the National Science Foundation) published a report in February 2016 detailing a workshop they held in 2015 all about what’s happening in regards to Civil Legal Aid Research, and what the agenda for future work should be. 
It is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in mandates to provide better, more networked legal help to people (including some special attention paid to elder abuse, trafficking victims, and other specific use cases). It also details the need for more scholarly work on people’s legal needs and the best ways to serve them. Very exciting!
White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable report on Civil Legal Aid Research
