This report is intended to help access to justice commissions take advantage of the high visibility of the commission movement and the many successful commission initiatives across the country. By leveraging this general level of support into ongoing stab ...

This report summarizes the findings of the 2002 Task Force based on its review of current trends and initiatives related to self-represented litigation. Briefly, the Task Force found that recent increases in the number of self-represented litigants – alth ...

In this 2000 White Paper, a COSCA sub-committee notes that self-represented litigants are by no means a new phenomenon in the courts. However, the then recent surge in self-represented litigation was unprecedented and shows no signs of abating. While no s ...

This report seeks to illuminate one particular aspect of the legal aid landscape: the confluence of social work services and civil legal services, which can often be siloed into separate and fragmented service delivery systems. The idea of removing the bo ...

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 ...

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted court operations across the country, prompting judges to postpone nonessential proceedings and conduct others through video or phone. Even as courts have to reopen, many continued or tested new ways to expand the use of rem ...

Published in 2018, this report provides a path forward to help courts use existing technologies to improve the user experience, particularly for those people who choose to represent themselves. Among the report’s detailed recommendations are: Ensure court ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts endeavored to find ways to operate safely and ensure that essential proceedings continued. In many jurisdictions, this involved quickly setting up remote or virtual courts, using meeting technologies such as Zoom or Go ...

The Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) published these Guiding Principles for Post-Pandemic Court Technology on July 16, 2020 with the goal to better guide state courts as they moved services to remote ...

In the fiscal year 2018, the Social Security Administration (SSA) began using a data set from LexisNexis (Lexis) called Accurint for Government on a widespread basis to determine whether recipients of needs-based government assistance had unreported real ...