In  Elkins v. Superior Court   (2007) 41 Cal.4th 1337,  the California court recommended that the Judicial Council of California establish a task force to “study and propose measures to assist trial courts in achieving efficiency and fairness in marital d ...

The Equal Access Unit of the California Judicial Branch Center for Families, Children & the Courts, provides materials for courts, court-based self-help programs, and other nonprofit providers of legal self-help services. The Unit provides the followi ...

This publication, from the National Association for Court Management (NACM), encourages the reader to this how the court environment- from the building, to the people, to the technology and resources- can be responsive to the needs and comfort of the publ ...

The SRLN Tiers Survey was developed for states to conduct a quick tiered inventory of their court based self-help services. Tier 1 services are asynchronous (one-way), Tier 2 services are synchronous (two-way), and Tier 3 services integrate multiple provi ...

Beginning in 2005, the New York State courts began developing Document Assembly Programs for use in its Help Centers using A2J Author for the front-end, HotDocs software for the back-end, and LawHelp Interactive server to host the programs. By 2009, this ...

This article presents the results from the first quantitative readability study of plain language court forms in the United States. Sixty citizens on a jury panel were selected to respond to brief questionnaires that tested relative comprehension of plain ...

In February of 2021, the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators adopted Resolution 2 In Support of Continuing Efforts to Meet Civil Legal Needs. After extensive findings setting out the need, especially during the CO ...

In 2019, the Michigan Advocacy Program (MAP) received a Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to bring UX design and usability testing training to the justice community. After having struggled with these topics in the ...

In this seminal article, Richard Zorza discusses the fact that we know little of the processes by which the millions of people who approach courts, legal aid intake systems, and hotlines are directed into them, or the access services they do or do not rec ...

There are 45.3 million persons living in poverty in the United States. 2 Poverty creates numerous challenges for individuals. Lack of affordable and livable housing, adequate healthcare, and sufficient food, and the inability to access and complete a qual ...