LANSING, Mich. — In a rare speech to lawmakers, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly said Wednesday that the state's poor economy has made it harder for some residents to afford legal services and steps must be taken to help them.

Her plans to address the problem include creating a task force to promote ways to help people who can't afford an attorney, and a Web site will be developed for non-lawyers who represent themselves in legal proceedings, Kelly said.

Home to the nation's highest unemployment rate of 14.1 percent, Michigan now has more people eligible for civil legal aid but agencies must often turn them away because they, too, have limited resources.

"Among our most persistent and entrenched problems is the high cost of using the courts," Kelly told House and Senate members during her State of the Judiciary speech at the state Capitol.

"For too many low- and middle-income people, the legal system is too expensive. And that's been the case for decades," she said. "But now in a cruel but logical irony, the state's current struggling economy has rendered more people in serious need of legal services and simultaneously made those services harder to afford."

Kelly, who became chief justice last year, also urged more support for those with mental illness, including programs that might prevent them from landing in the state's criminal justice system.

"The truth is that a great amount of crime has its origins in mental illness," Kelly said. "Unfortunately, our current model for dealing with the mentally ill tends toward imposing treatment only after a person's behavior has reached a crisis point, when the person becomes violent."

Some mental health support services have faced budget cuts in recent years of Michigan's ongoing state government budget problems. The pressure to make cuts will continue in the budget year that begins Oct. 1 because the state faces an overall combined budget deficit of about $1.7 billion.

Kelly's speech marked the first time in a decade that a chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court addressed a joint session of the Legislature. The last to do so was Justice Elizabeth Weaver in 2000.