Access to Justice

Location: 102 B/C
Time: Tuesday 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Presenters: Katherine Alteneder, JD, Alan Carlson, Salvador Reynoso

A Maturity Model for IT Access Solutions

Katherine Alteneder will explain how we understand the range of IT solutions designed to improve access to justice. Based on a recent national review of self-help services, a maturity model for IT solutions will be presented, providing an overview for this track through its description of one-directional information services (e.g., instructions and glossaries), bidirectional services (e.g., guided document assembly), and a rich combination of reengineered business processes, access to legal services, case triage tools, and more. 

To Infinity and Beyond – Holistic Remote Services for Self-Represented Ligitants

Alan Carlson and Salvador Reynoso will describe what happens when court self-help service moves from the anonymous user to customer.  How can a court serve customers who are unable to come to court, or who can be serviced without coming to the courthouse, and more efficiently assist customers at the courthouse? In this session you will learn how courts are using new private-sector technology to take access to justice to a whole new level and be challenged to think about new ways you can better serve pro se litigants.

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Tuesday 11:15 AM - 12:30 PM
Presenters: Rebecca Becker, Snorri Ogata, Michael Gatiglio

Traffic cases represent over half the caseload of the state courts. Most courts have simplified their websites and pushed traffic payments online, so the next wave of automation is focused on the “other” reasons people show up to court to talk to a clerk.  In this session, two approaches to improving customer service and efficiency will be highlighted. From Los Angeles, see how the Virtual Traffic Clerk helps the court provide paying with cash, paying anywhere, setting up a payment plan, and getting tailored procedural advice from a virtual customer assistant. Minnesota will present the MN Court Payment Center, a centralized, statewide operation for traffic case processing that leverages automation and technology, optimizes economies of scale, reduces labor costs, and augments service-delivery options for court customers.  Both presentations demonstrate how these jurisdictions have totally reengineered traffic case processing.

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Tuesday 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
Presenters: Jamie L. Walter, Ph.D. , Sarah Coffey Frush, JD, Katherine Alteneder, JD, Sara Gonsalves, JD

The Maryland and Minnesota Courts use a variety of technological solutions to help self-represented litigants (SRLs) without litigants having to come to a courthouse. This remote service delivery model affords greater access to legal help and flexibility in meeting their needs. This talk will highlight two remote service delivery models. The Maryland Judiciary augments their walk-in services with an extensive People’s Law Library website, with online live chat, phone services and has extensive data on visitors’ demographics, service needs and services delivered.  The Minnesota Courts (Statewide) Self Help Center and the walk-in Self Help Centers located in Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District (Hennepin County) utilize various forms of technology including an extensive website, online videos, step-by-step tutorials, and document assembly tools, and software which allows them remote computer access to help SRLs. This moderated panel will include live demos and discussion with the audience. 

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Tuesday 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Presenters: Rena Micklewright, Mark Leong

As the demand continues to increase for interpreters (in hundreds of different languages each year), courts are finding new ways to link qualified interpreters with litigants at the courthouse. Leaner, more agile and portable combinations of technology tools are helping to provide greater distribution of these services.  In this session, Arizona and New York will describe what they have learned since their states began providing remote video interpretation including how select courts or the AOC can serve as a virtual-hub for a wider ring of multiple court locations, how to make the equipment available within and across courthouses, training and support requirements for court staff and judges, and more.

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Tuesday 4:15 PM - 5:30 PM
Presenters: Kim Allard, Sharon Reiss, Robert Turner

Initiating legal action requires a knowledge of the legal process, legal vocabulary, and mastering the art of completing legal forms. Defective forms can slow down or stymie the flow of a case. In this session,  two free, online statewide solutions will be profiled. Georgia’s magistrate courts handle a high volume of cases in each of that state’s 159 counties. With the active participation of judges and the vendor, the Magistrate Courts Free Forms Generator was designed and implemented in 2014 to reduce delay, enhance consistency of information, and thus improve outcomes and timeliness for a range of high volume case types. Utah built its Online Court Assistance Program to provide a similar solution for domestic, guardianship/conservatorship, landlord-tenant, protection order, and small claims cases. 

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Wednesday 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Presenters: David Slayton, Casey Kennedy, Alan Carlson

What are we learning about self-represented litigants who e-file? Who are they? Where are they? What cases do they file? How do the tools work for them? Using data gathered from surveys of self-represented litigants who have e-filed, the superior court in Orange County and the state of Texas will offer empirically based insights on whether, how, and for whom  e-filing is enhancing access.

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Wednesday 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM
Presenters: Jennifer Rasmussen, Stacey Marz

From Green Screens to GUI – Modernizing Public Access

Jennifer Rasmussen and Sherri Dennis will describe Nebraska’s project to bring public-access courthouse terminals a 21st-century software makeover, which aimed to provide an easier-to-use interface and increase the number of services available. Where green screens once only allowed visitors to search local county court cases, the courthouse kiosks provide access to statewide case information, including images of court-filed documents.  Other services made available statewide are trial court calendar searches, statewide electronic case payments and citation payments, general judicial branch information, legal self-help with forms, and driver's license reinstatements.  Live chat is also available for services and court process questions. 

One-stop Shopping to Resolve Contested Divorce and Custody Cases

Stacey Marz will show how Alaska's Court System Early Resolution Program (ERP) uses readily available technology tools to facilitate the efficient and effective resolution of divorce and custody cases involving two self-represented litigants. In ERP, the court triages all newly filed contested divorce and custody cases to determine likelihood of settlement and schedules suitable cases to a mass calendar before a settlement judge.  Volunteer unbundled attorneys and court mediators work with litigants to resolve the case, usually in one hearing.  ERP uses off-the-shelf software, hardware, and mobile tools to facilitate the program's ability to triage and resolve cases efficiently, to prepare and distribute final documents at the hearing, and to include litigants who often appear remotely by telephone or video conference. 

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Location: 102 B/C
Time: Thursday 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Presenters: Janet Cornell, Richard Schauffler, Danielle Fox

This session will demonstrate how to transfer performance metrics from mere ideas to actual practice and use, and why measures and metrics are critical to operations, demonstrate accountability, support access to justice, and display good leadership.  Examples, challenges, risks, and benefits on the use of metrics will be discussed, as will suggested actions for getting started and ensuring business and technology needs and functionality are addressed.

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