The latest issue of SJI E-News announces that the Board has approved six SRL related grants.

Here is the text of the announcement:

During the 2nd quarter Board meeting, 6 SIG grants were awarded totaling $275,158. These projects address one of SJI’s new Priority Investment Areas: Self-Represented Litigation and the State Courts. SIG grants were made to the: 1) Judicial Council of California to train bilingual JusticeCorps volunteers to provide enhanced services for self-represented litigants (SRLs); 2)Indiana Administrative Office of the Courts to train volunteer college and law students to serve statewide pro se clinic clients; 3) National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to develop a standard set of definitions and counting rules for cases involving one or more SRLs; 4) Self- Represented Litigation Network (SRLN) and NCSC to develop formal case triage protocols for assistance to SRLs; 5) SRLN to faicilitate state court reimbursement under Title IV-D, and promote awareness of this resource; and 6) South Carolina Access to Justice Commission for delivery of legal information to SRLs in underserved areas of South Carolina.

I will be working on the protocol and IV-D grants, and perhaps unsurprisingly regard all six of these grants as very good news indeed.  It is great to see SJI recognizing the importance of this issue, and making such investments.  Let’s hope SJI’s grants will show the way to other funders, particularly since there were so many other good  but as yet unfunded ideas submitted in response to the solicitation.

I hope to be reporting on the progress of all of these grants on this blog.