COLUMBIA – The South Carolina Access to Justice Commission has selected Hannah C. Honeycutt to serve as its new Executive Director. Honeycutt will lead the Commission in its mission to address barriers to legal representation in South Carolina.
Honneycutt is a 2007 graduate of Wagner College in New York with a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, in English and Spanish, and a 2013 graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law. With a strong record of service-related employment and community involvement, Honeycutt comes to the Commission from the Richland County (South Carolina) Public Defender’s Office, where she served for five years as an assistant public defender.
Created by the Supreme Court of South Carolina in January 2007, the Access to Justice Commission is charged with identifying civil legal needs and developing a long-term plan to provide these services for low-income South Carolinians.
“We designed a thorough selection process through which we reviewed applications from dozens of qualified candidates,” said South Carolina Supreme Court Justice John Cannon Few, who is chairman of the Access to Justice Commission. “Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty, a panel of Commission members, and I interviewed five of the top candidates before we arrived at a consensus that Hannah will do a fabulous job in this tremendously important role.”
Like many states, South Carolina faces significant challenges in providing access to justice and to civil courts for hundreds of thousands of low to moderate income families. The Commission recently developed a strategic plan under the leadership of Judge John E. Waites of the United States Bankruptcy Court and other Commission members. Honeycutt will begin leading the Commission in its work to execute the strategic plan to help make civil justice available to all citizens of South Carolina starting at the Commission's next meeting on June 17.
