Report: Supreme Court Task Force to Examine Limited Legal Licensing (Utah 2015)
From the Introduction:
Year published:
2015
Document Author:
State of Utah Supreme Court
Article: Estimating the Cost of Civil Litigation (NCSC 2013)
Complaints about litigation costs have likely existed for as long as the legal profession, but those costs are extremely difficult to measure. Most studies of litigation costs rely on surveys that ask lawyers to report costs in a sample of actual cases filed in court. However, many attorneys decline to respond citing attorney-client confidentiality, which undermines the reliability of study findings.
Year published:
2013
Document Author:
NCSC
Paper: How Fair, Fast, and Cheap Should Courts Be? (Greacen 1999)
Making the court system fairer, faster, and cheaper are at the top of most agendas for restoring public trust and confidence in the legal system. But how much fairer, faster, and cheaper do the courts need to be to meet the public's needs? So long as the only benchmarks are those the courts set for themselves, we can never be confident that meeting them will ensure we are providing adequate public service.
Year published:
1999
Document Author:
John Greacen
Report: Washington State Civil Legal Needs Study (Washington State Supreme Court 2015)
A Washington Supreme Court commissioned statewide survey of more than 1,600 low-income Washingtonians discovered that seven of ten low-income individuals and families in Washington State face at least one significant civil legal problem each year, and the average number of problems per low-income household has tripled over the last decade. More than three-quarters of those with civil legal problems struggle without a lawyer or any type of legal help.
Year published:
2015
Document Author:
Washington State Supreme Court
Weblinks: The Court Statistics Project (NCSC 2015)
The Court Statistics Project (courtstatistics.org) (CSP) — a joint project of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) — publishes caseload data from the courts of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. These data are provided by the offices of the state court administrator in those jurisdictions.
Year published:
2015
Document Author:
National Center for State Courts (NCSC)
Conference: 2010 California Conference on Self-Represented Litigants (California 2010)
Starting in 2006, the California Administrative Office of the Courts has held a statewide Conference on Self-Represented Litigants. This conference brings together self-help center attorneys and staff, court administrators, legal aid providers and law librarians to learn from one another about strategies for serving self-represented litigants.
Year published:
2010
Document Author:
California Judicial Council Center for Families Children & the Courts
SRLN Brief: Procedural Fairness / Procedural Justice (SRLN 2015)
Research has shown that when defendants and litigants perceive the court process to be fair, they are more likely to comply with court orders and follow the law in the future—regardless of whether they “win” or “lose” their case. This is called procedural fairness or procedural justice. Increasingly, national judicial organizations have recognized the importance of promoting procedural fairness.
Year published:
2015
Document Author:
Self-Represented Litigation Network
Best Practices: Document Assembly Programs Best Practices Guide for Court System Development and Implementation Using A2J Author (New York 2017)
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 pilot had been deployed statewide and the Access to Justice Program was able to identify the best practices that would likely be effective and generally worthy of replication for court systems.
Year published:
2017
Document Author:
Rochelle Klempner, New York State Courts Access to Justice Program
Paper: Non-Lawyer Legal Assistance Roles (Clarke 2015)
The Utah Supreme Court has created a committee to study the possibility of creating a limited license legal technician - or something along those lines - in Utah. Their report is due out at the end of November. As part of the committee's work, Tom Clarke of NCSC (and co-author of the Roles Beyond Lawyers Preliminary Evaluation and Classification Frameworks (pdf)) was asked to write a white paper about non-lawyer assistance.
Year published:
2015
Document Author:
Thomas M. Clarke
Article: The Disconnect Between the Requirements of Judicial Neutrality and Those of the Appearance of Neutrality when Parties Appear Pro Se: Causes, Solutions, Recommendations, and Implications (Zorza 2004)
In this article Richard Zorza explores the concept of engaged neutrality which, when employed by the judge, creates a more transparent and arguably more ethically neutral playing field for the self-represented litigant.
Recommended Citation: Richard Zorza, The Disconnect Between the Requirements of Judicial Neutrality and Those of the Appearance of Neutrality when Parties Appear Pro Se: Causes, Solutions, Recommendations, and Implications, 17 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, 423 (2004).
Year published:
2004
Document Author:
Richard Zorza