I’m not going to spoil this story by telling you everything that happens, but read this.
The first para is:
The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.
The story includes the finding of an abandoned baby in the subway, a gutsy and instinctively right judge, adoption, and a gay marriage.
Bring your tissues.
Here is the link.
Among the highlights is Increased use of document assembly:
In the first three quarters of 2012, there were 80,780 assemblies, an increase of 32% from the first three quarters of 2011. It is projected that there will be more than 100,000 assemblies in 2012 if usage continues on its present course.
There was a sizable increase in assemblies of 51% attributable to Supreme Court, Surrogate’s Court, NYC Civil Court and NYC Housing Court, as well as to the new programs for District, City and Town & Village Courts.
Including a wide variety of new forms programs:
• Tenant Restore to Calendar Program: This program is for unrepresented tenants with cases in the NYC Housing Courts. It makes the papers needed to ask the court to restore a case to the calendar. It was launched in March 2012. The user has the option to print Spanish instructions in addition to instructions in English. http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/restoretocalendar_diy.shtml.
• Safe Deposit Box Petition Program: This program helps unrepresented Surrogate’s Court litigants create court papers to request access to a safe deposit box of someone who died. The program was launched in May 2012. http://nycourthelp.gov/diy/safedeposit.html.
• Small Property Owner Licensee Holdover Petition Program (NYC): In August 2012, a licensee holdover program was created for landlords in New York City with cases in the Civil Court. The program allows a small property owner of unregulated housing to make either a 10-day Notice to Quit or Notice of Petition and Petition, along with affidavits of service and instructions on what to do next. http://nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/diy_smallPropOwnLic.shtml.
• Small Property Owner Licensee Holdover Petition Program (Outside NYC): In September 2012, a licensee holdover program was created for District, City, Town and Village Court litigants to prepare the court forms they need to commence a proceeding. Alternatively, the program can create the predicate 10-day Notice to Quit required to evict a licensee. The program is for small property owners of mobile homes, houses or apartments to use to evict someone who was invited to live in the premises by a former tenant. http://nycourthelp.gov/diy/licenseeHoldover.html.
• Small Property Owner Squatter Holdover Petition Program: In November 2012, a new DIY Form program was launched for small property owners outside New York City to commence a squatter holdover proceeding in the District, City, Town or Village Courts. The program makes either a ten-day Notice to Quit or a Notice of Petition and Petition and accompanying court papers, along with instructions for the litigant to proceed when a person has moved in without permission. http://nycourthelp.gov/diy/squatterHoldover.html.
• Custody/Visitation Enforcement Petition Program: This program helps Family Court litigants seek enforcement of a custody and/or visitation order when the
other parent is not complying with the order. The program was launched in
November 2012. http://nycourthelp.gov/diy/custodyEnforcement.html. • Custody/Visitation Modification Petition Program: In November 2012, a
program was created for Family Court litigants to use to ask the court to modify an existing custody and/or visitation order. http://nycourthelp.gov/diy/custodyModification.html.
Here is some of the data from the user surveys:
The majority of comments in the User Surveys express gratitude and appreciation for the service. Many praise the excellent assistance that the litigants received from court personnel. The most common repeated themes rave about the DIY Form programs’ ease of use, the amount of time and money saved, the procedural information garnered and the feeling of empowerment gained from using the DIY Form programs. A sampling of user “testimonials” are posted on the NYS Courts Access to Justice Program’s website at: http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/nya2j/DIYtestimonials.shtml.
• Saved Time: The User Surveys indicate that 95% of all people said that DIY programs saved them time, an increase of 2% from 2011. There was an increase of 4% of users age 65 and older who said that DIY programs saved them time from 2011.
• How Referred: The User Survey responses prove that court personnel play a large role in directing litigants to the DIY Form programs. 76% of users said they were referred to the program by a court employee.
Comments on a Draft Language Access Planning and Technical Assistance Tool for Courts are being sought by the Department of Justice.
Comments are due by March 1. 2013.
The draft includes sections and checklists for:
On preliminary review it seems very helpful, and far from the heavy-handed approach that some have feared.
I particularly urge those we work on LEP issues with technology, self-help and other less traditional approaches to look at the draft and make comments on how it can be as comprehensive as possible.
The LSC Technology Grants solicitation is out, with short letters of intent due March 18. While applications must be made by existing LSC grantees, there is great openness to cooperative grants in which access to justice partners, including courts, are major collaborators.
The headline this year is the major role played in follow up to the Technology Summit.In addition, LSC is treating as areas of interest pro bono and use of data for strategic and advocacy analysis. There are huge opportunities for impact and creativity here. I encourage brainstorming, rather than just trying to fit a need into a slot. This is the opportunity to get in on the ground floor with the exciting process of Summit follow up, and the creation of an entire next generation delivery and access infrastructure — one that much more tightly binds together legal aid, courts and other access institutions.
Below is the relevant part of the solicitation (with links added by me to prior postings).
III. Areas of Interest
LSC welcomes applications for a wide variety of projects. For 2013, LSC has three areas of particular interest in which programs are encouraged to submit proposals for innovative technology approaches. The designation of these areas does not in any way limit the scope of proposals in which LSC is interested. The 2013 areas of particular interest are:
A. Key Initiatives from LSC’s 2012-2013 Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice.
• Document Assembly – See Grant Category 2: Replication and Adaptation
• Remote Service Delivery – Remote delivery of legal services can reduce the costs of connecting attorneys and paralegals to clients and improve the likelihood that low-income people will receive high-quality legal assistance regardless of their location. Additionally, Americans have become more accustomed to online service delivery in areas such as banking, shopping, and support services. Recognizing this change, LSC seeks proposals to develop new and creative systems that would promote the delivery of remote legal services efficiently and effectively. It encourages organizations to explore private bar innovations — such as virtual law office (VLO) platforms — and advances seen in the medical field, where providers increasingly utilize patient portals and telemedicine in their practices.
• Mobile Technologies – Services and assistance that can be delivered to or using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. For many clients, a cellphone may be their only dedicated Internet access point and is likely the technology with which they are most familiar. According to a 2012 Pew survey, this is particularly true for people “under the age of 30, Black and Latino users, and people with lower income and education levels.” Proposals could address the use of text messaging, responsive web designs to deliver content to mobile devices, specialized apps or tools for use on smartphones or ways to better integrate the use of mobile technologies in the delivery of legal services by advocates.
• Expert Systems and Checklists – “Expert systems” emulate the decision-making ability of human experts. In legal services, these systems can be used to help self- represented litigants navigate an unfamiliar legal process or support legal services professionals by augmenting existing systems and practice tools. Such systems can be envisioned for a wide variety of topics including, for example, benefits entitlement, identification of necessary forms and procedures, alternative approaches to problem solutions, and preventive law. One subset of expert systems, dynamic, interactive checklists, guide clients and advocates through the steps in processes such as initiating or responding to court actions and dealing with government agencies. Expert system applications include those that assist lawyers in analyzing complex but recurring fact/law situations; thus prompting collection of all relevant information and provision of a tentative legal rights diagnoses. To learn more about the use of expert systems and see some examples, you may go to: http://tig.lsc.gov/guidance-expert-systems.
• Triage – Triage systems are online assessment tools used to direct users to the most appropriate available resources to address their legal needs. These systems ask the user questions to determine such factors as the level of assistance needed, the abilities of the user, and whether or not any opposing party is represented. Using logic built into the system by the designers, the user is then directed to the most appropriate resource available. (These resources may include self-help materials on a website, the legal aid program’s intake portal (online or hotline), or a referral to a pro bono project, court self-help center, government agency, or a social services organization.) So that the service options will be as broad as possible, ideally such a system will be a collaboration among as many access to justice partners as possible, such as legal aid programs, the courts, and the private bar.
B. Leveraging Technology to Increase Pro Bono Attorney and Law Student Involvement.
Engagement of pro bono attorneys is a valuable and essential resource for increasing the supply of advocates and meeting the increased demand for provision of legal services to low income persons. Many state justice communities have urged attorneys to get more involved in pro bono efforts, and some have suggested that particular categories of attorneys, such as retiring or retired lawyers, in-house counsel and recent graduates, are well-poised to expand access to justice in their states. In addition, many law students have a strong interest in providing legal help to those in need. As discussed in LSC’s recently released Report of the Pro Bono Task Force, information technology can play an important role in recruiting pro bono attorneys and law students and providing them the tools necessary to effectively meet the legal needs of clients. LSC seeks proposals for projects that leverage creative uses of technology to enhance pro bono attorney and law student involvement.
C. Use of Data to Analyze Service Delivery and Develop Advocacy Strategies.
Recipients are increasingly recognizing that more effective use of a wide range of data can enable them to better identify: 1) current and emerging needs of their client communities; 2) patterns of service delivery by case type, level of service or demographics of clients; and 3) outcomes achieved for clients. Data analysis can assist in developing specially tailored advocacy and service delivery strategies that more effectively address the most pressing legal needs and achieve the greatest outcomes for clients. Valuable data are available from a range of federal, state and local government agencies, as well as academic institutions, policy groups and other non-profits. LSC encourages initiatives that enable recipients, by themselves or in partnership with other entities, to use technologies to more readily identify, compile and employ data in ways that improve the responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency of services provided to clients. LSC also encourages projects that systematically evaluate and document the ways and extent to which technologies funded through TIG and other sources affect the quality and quantity of client services and/or the effectiveness and efficiency of program operations. The focus of such analyses might include, but are not limited to, pro se forms and resources, mobile applications, intake systems, and video-conferencing.
The ABA House of Delegates has passed a resolution in support of unbundling.
RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourage practitioners, when appropriate, to consider limiting the scope of their representation as a means of increasing access to legal services.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourage and support the efforts of national, state, local and territorial bar associations, the judiciary and court administrations, and CLE providers to take measures to assure that practitioners who limit the scope of their representation do so with full understanding and recognition of their professional obligations.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourage and support the efforts of national, state, local and territorial bar associations, the judiciary and court administrations, and those providing legal services to increase public awareness of the availability of limited scope representation as an option to help meet the legal needs of the public.
This has the potential to be helpful in a number of ways:
The Report which accompanies the Resolution is a valuable resource for advocacy, including as it does analysis of state rules, a summary of arguments for unbundlng, and a report on the polling data about public perceptions of unbundling. I particularly hope that it will encourage lawyer referral services to offer and encourage unbundling.
There is a new timely article on the new Washington State Limited Legal Technician Rule. Here is the table of contents:
INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………….75
I. THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE CRISIS……………………………………..78
II. THE WASHINGTON STATE LLLT RULE …………………………..91
A. The LLLT Rule Background and Debate ……………..91
B. APR 28: The Text and Decision …………………………111
C. Implementation of APR 28 ……………………………….. 116
III. THE LLLT RULE: MEANINGFUL JUSTICE, BUT ALSO EQUAL JUSTICE?………………………………………118
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………128
Particularly interesting and useful are the discussion of the history of the Rule, at pp 91-111, and the detailed description of the Rule as adopted, at pp 111-116, referencing pp 99-100.
It should be noted that several steps need to be taken before limited legal technicians actually provide services in Washington. These include the establishment of the Board, the setting up of the examination, and the putting into place of rules, that must themselves be approved by the state Supreme Court. Particularly important, the Board must recommend practice areas for approval by the Court, meaning that the question as to what areas of law will be covered is still up for grabs.
However, none of this should undercut the importance of the step, and the extent to which it has stimulated discussion and progress in other jurisdictions. The article, with its thoroughness and general support for the concept will play an important role in this critical ongiong progress.
In State Dept. of Family Services v. Currier, 2013 WY 16, the Wyoming Supreme Court rejected the claim that the risk of incarceration required appointment of counsel in civil contempt child support cases in which the relief was sought by the state, with the assistance of counsel.
This, of course, is a question reserved in Turner v. Rogers.
The opinion is disturbing, not only in the result, or the fact that this is the first state supreme court to decide the issue since Turner, but because of the logic, which seems fallacious.
The court correctly notes that the issue is held open by Turner, and then discuses the analysis of Turner and Mathews v. Edgridge, but then makes the following leap.
By contrast, the procedure employed in Wyoming contempt proceedings for failure to pay child support was described by the district court in this case as:
The Respondent in this and all Child Support Enforcement matters are informed in the Petition, and by the Court, of the burden on the State to show a failure to pay court ordered child support is willful. Respondents are provided forms upon which they can set forth current income, asset and liability information and are given opportunity to explain any reasons they may have for failure to pay.
These procedures meet the notice and opportunity to be heard requirements set out in Turner. Given those procedures, it is hard to imagine what more appointed counsel could bring to the dialogue.
There are two problems here. First, the question, as indeed accurately stated but never properly analyzed by the court is: “We must consider what procedures are in place or may be put in place to offset the lack of symmetry occasioned by DFS being represented while the obligor is not to determine the comparative risk of erroneous incarceration.”
The procedures approved by by the Wyoming Supreme Court, however, were the same as those approved in Turner for use in situations where the plaintiff is not the state and no party is represented by counsel. The Wyoming Supreme Court did not examine whether these same procedures could also suffice in the case before it, where the state is the plaintiff. In fact, it is hard to know how the Wyoming Supreme Court really could have passed on these procedures as applied to the facts, given how little detail it had about the facts from the trial court. The court also gave little heed to the warning in Turner that state-initiated proceedings “more closely resemble debt-collection proceedings” (Turner at 15) and that, “[T]he average defendant does not have the professional legal skill to protect himself when brought before a tribunal with power to take his life or liberty, wherein the prosecution is presented by experienced and learned counsel.” (Turner at 15-16, cf cite, quoting Johnson v. Zerbst)
Secondly, the conclusion that “it is hard to imagine what more appointed counsel could bring to the dialogue” is hard to understand, given the absence of any record as to the details of the case, and the absence of counsel on appeal. (This is partly the result of the procedural context of the case, in which the trial court ordered appointment of counsel, to be paid by the state agency, and the agency appealed, thereby apparently cutting off the presentation of any counter argument. It appears from the docket entries that one of the nominal respondents (probably the non-paying father) moved and left no forwarding address, that no opposing brief was filed, and that the case was expedited for decision without hearing. In contrast, there are four lawyers listed as appearing for the government.
In short, the opinion should be given no deference by other states that ultimately consider the issue.
P.S. Thanks to the National Coalition for Civil Right to Counsel for information for this post.
The New York Times has a nice obituary today of John E. Karlin, the lead industrial psychologist at Bell Labs for many years.
He worked at the interface between humans and machines — one of the first in a field in which so many of us work today.
Among this most important achievements, with which we all live every day, was deciding on the optimum layout of the phone touch pad, now obviously the model for almost all devices (except the earlier-designed calculator, which now befuddles us).
In 1946, a Bell Labs engineer, Rudolph F. Mallina, had patented an early model, with buttons arranged in two horizontal rows: 1 through 5 on top, 6 through 0 below. It was never marketed.
By the late 1950s, when touch-tone dialing — much faster than rotary — seemed an inevitability, Mr. Karlin’s group began to study what form the phone of the future should take. Keypad configurations examined included Mr. Mallina’s, one with buttons in a circle, another with buttons in an arc, and a rectangular pad.
The victorious design, based on the group’s studies of speed, accuracy and users’ own preferences, used keys half an inch square. The keypad itself was rectangular, comprising 10 keys: a 3-by-3 grid spanning 1 through 9, plus zero, centered below. Today’s omnipresent 12-button keypad, with star and pound keys flanking the zero, grew directly from this model.
Putting “1-2-3” on the pad’s top row instead of the bottom (the configuration used, then as now, on adding machines and calculators) was also born of Mr. Karlin’s group: they found it made for more accurate dialing.
The obit ends with a cute story about how his earlier work on facilitating the change from letter phone office codes, with their perceived organic feel, to all number phone codes, was widely publicized, and led to public opprobrium:
“One day I was at a cocktail party and I saw some people over in the corner,” Mr. Karlin recalled in a 2003 lecture. “They were obviously looking at me and talking about me. Finally a lady from this group came over and said, ‘Are you the John Karlin who is responsible for all-number dialing?’ ”
Mr. Karlin drew himself up with quiet pride.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“How does it feel,” his inquisitor asked, “to be the most hated man in America?”
As we work on human interfaces, we might remember that there are always, alternatives, and that testing is better than speculating.
By the way, would the Internet have taken off if we had had to learn IP numbers for websites and e-mail addresses?
Another straw in a gathering wind.
This article in the California Bar Journal reports on the Bar’s Board’s exploring the possibility of limited practice professionals:
The State Bar Board of Trustees has expressed interest in examining a limited-practice licensing program that would create a new class of professionals who could give legal advice.
At a retreat in San Diego last month, at which the board explored various ideas for improving public protection and the State Bar’s regulatory function, some trustees said such a licensing program would not only provide valuable legal services to the public, but also allow law students and others who haven’t passed the bar to put their skills to use.
Trustee Heather L. Rosing said those who can’t afford the services of a licensed attorney are often forced to turn to non-lawyers because of cost. Although legal aid, pro bono service and court-employed family law facilitators all try to fill this gap, too many people need legal assistance and simply cannot afford it at today’s legal market rates.
“We’ve created somewhat of a black market,” she said. “We are simply not serving the vast majority of citizens when it comes to their legal needs.”
A limited licensing program, in addition to helping clients, would create an avenue of employment for law school graduates and legal technicians who haven’t passed the bar, board members said. Engaging in limited practice might be an avenue to eventually becoming a qualified lawyer.
Trustee Dennis Mangers, a former state legislator and public member of the board, acknowledged that such a proposal may not be popular among some in the legal profession. But he urged his colleagues to consider a new licensing program such as one being launched in Washington state (link added).
So this makes California the third state exploring the area. We also heard today of another step in New York, in which the Chief Justice, in his State of the Judiciary Speech (at page 13-14), formally announced the establishment of a Committee “to develop a pilot program in New York that will allow those who cannot afford an attorney to receive low-cost guidance in simpler legal matters by qualified non-lawyers.” See my prior discussion of the New York Legal Services Task Force here.
The webinar description (Strengthening Indigent Defense: Understanding State and Federal Resources, posted by the National Criminal Justice Association) says it all:
This webinar (now online) will showcase the Justice Department’s efforts to encourage jurisdictions to bring all system stakeholders together and will highlight some of the state and federal resources available to the public defense community. This webinar will focus on funding opportunities available through the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG) program, federal support for public defense initiatives, current opportunities for training and technical assistance and highlight the work of DOJ’s Access to Justice Initiative. In addition, attendees will hear from state public defenders about the process of applying for grant funds and showcase strategies for integrating the indigent defense function into criminal justice resource planning. Presenters for this webinar are Melanca Clark, senior counsel with the Department of Justice’s Access to Justice Initiative; Edward C. Monahan, director, Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy; Jeanie Vela, office manager, Denver Office of the Colorado State Public Defender; and Jack Cutrone, executive director for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
As I have previously blogged, it is wonderful that steps are being taken to make Byrne Grants more widely available to Courts, public defenders and others. This shows the value of federal initiatives looking at the whole access picture.
Slides from the webinar are here.
This is great news. Early in January, the Senate confirmed New York Court of Appeals Judge Jonathan Lippman as a member of the State Justice Institute Board.
Readers of this blog do not need to be reminded of CJ Lippman’s visionary and forceful leadership for access to justice.
We look to the Chief for continued transformative leadership in support for funding for legal aid, for changes in court processes that make the system cheaper and more effective, as well as for a flexible and ambitious understanding of how the profession can best play its role in access.
SJI is a critical component of the national innovation infrastructure, and this is an addition to celebrate.
The New York Times Economix blog has an interesting post on outcome measurement.
The writer rebuts the skepticism among readers about the viability of quality measurement — including an aside about the justice area:
These readers appear to harbor genuine doubt that quality in health care can ever be properly defined and measured. But what is the alternative — just relying on anecdotes and word of mouth, or the assurances from health care providers that they provide the highest quality of health care in the world?
It is, to be sure, challenging to measure the quality of any human-service sectors, be it health care, education, the administration of the law or even corporate management. That is why anecdotes and word of mouth remain important signals that attract or repel individuals from particular products or institutions.
But flight once seemed impossible, too, perhaps even after the Wright brothers’ first flight. “No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris,” Orville Wright famously said, because “no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.” Wright also offered the thought that “if we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.”
The large and growing cadre of clinicians and measurement scientists engaged in measuring quality in health care can find inspiration in aviation. They persist, and they have registered much more progress in recent decades than might be imagined — much more, for example, than has been achieved in other human-services sectors, notably education, not to mention what we call the administration of “justice.” (Bold added)
The blogger, Uwe Reinhartd of Princetown, goes on to analyze the multiple complexities of inputs and outcomes, in an analysis that is strikingly similar to our discussions about courtroom outcomes as being insufficient to measure justice outcomes.
In the health care production process, quality can be monitored on several facets:
• The characteristics of the purchased inputs used in production of health care — e.g., the training of health personnel, the sophistication of the equipment supporting health professionals or the degree to which the architecture of facilities encourages or hinders patient-centered health care;
• The structure within which health care production takes place — e.g., the degree to which the production of health care is clinically integrated, including the electronic information technology that enhances or hinders that integration;
• The treatment processes for particular medical conditions — e.g., degree of adherence to known best clinical practices (expressed in practice guidelines and clinical pathways derived from these guidelines), processes that avoid hospital-generated infections and avoid re-admissions that could have been avoided, and so on;
• The impact of medical interventions on the patients’ health and well-being in the short and long run, often referred to simply as “outcomes” — e.g., survival rates by time periods, functional status, pain and so on;
• And, very important, satisfaction of patients with the treatment processes they have experienced, measured by means of surveys, ideally not administered by providers themselves.
This particular division of quality metrics goes back to a classic paper on the quality of health care published in 1966 by Dr. Avedis Donabedian, a distinguished physician and a towering figure in the field of quality measurement who died in 2000.
The post concludes by urging the development of multiple outcome scoring systems:
Efforts to hold health care providers formally accountable for the quality of their care are rarely one-metric systems. Instead, they resemble a final examination in a college course, with scores on many different questions, each with a relative weight, which are then totaled as a weighted sum to produce the final overall grade.
There is much to learn from here. We have much to learn from our medical siblings. The post has some charts that are very helpful in understanding the complexities.
Harvard’s Journal of Legal Technology has now published some of the papers from the first LSC technology summit in a single integrated article, the table of contents of which appears below. Triage and Mobile survive directly on the list of five priorities. Moreover Web-Based and ATJ Integration are closely parallel to the Distant Services, which is also on the list. The Barriers and Adoption sections tend to cut across all the strategies.
I. INTRODUCTION (JOHN GREACEN)
II. WEB-BASED LEGAL SERVICES DELIVERY CAPABILITIES (JANE RIBADENEYRA)
III. LET’S NOT MAKE IT WORSE: ISSUES TO CONSIDER IN ADOPTING NEW TECHNOLOGY (BONNIE ROSE HOUGH)
IV. MOBILE STRATEGIES FOR LEGAL SERVICES (ABHIJEET CHAVAN)
V. ACCESS TO JUSTICE INTEGRATION WITH EMERGING COURT TECHNOLOGIES (JAMES E. CABRAL & THOMAS M. CLARKE)
VI. TECH-SUPPORTED TRIAGE: THE KEY TO MAXIMIZING EFFECTIVENESS AND ACCESS (BONNIE ROSE HOUGH & RICHARD ZORZA)
VII. OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO ADOPTION OF EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING ACCESS TO JUSTICE (LINDA REXER & PHIL MALONE)
I hope this integrated paper will be useful in showing the extent to which there is already a broad general consensus about the strategies needed to move forward. While there is indeed much to do to in figuring out some of the more exciting detail, and in building the collaborations and institutions needed to maintain momentum, I think that the lesson of these papers is that there is little fundamental disagreement about the systems that need to be built.
The challenge is to decide which organizations are going to take leadership responsibility, and be held to account in moving forward. To quote the President in a broader context, this stuff is not self-executing.
My article on triage, titled The Access to Justice “Sorting Hat” — Towards a System of Triage and Intake that Maximizes Access and Outcomes, 89 Denv. U. L. Rev. 859 (2012), is now online at the above link.
I very much hope that the paper advances the discussion about triage. The reference in the title to the “Sorting Hat” is, of course, to the triage process that occurs early in the first Harry Potter book and film. The point is made that the Sorting Hat acts with more transparency that most of our access to justice triage systems.
Here are the key suggestions about building a triage function, as summarized at the beginning of the paper:
With the increasing focus on triage as a key to 100 access, as shown and advanced at the recent technology Summit, this is likely to be major area of discussion as we move forward.
Indeed, the paper concludes:
In particular, this paper highlights that any effectively functioning system is going to have to be skillfully and legitimately coordinated. It is hoped that this paper will also encourage states to start to wrestle with the problem of how to establish a system to do so and that state players will start to take responsibility for thinking about the triage function, even before it is practicable to start to deploy it. Professor Dumbledore would ask no less.
As reported in the Law Vegas Review Journal, this court app helps people find out which courtroom their case will be heard in.
The application will help users search via party, attorney or case number to find the date, time and courtroom for a case. The search will also find the name of the judge to apologize to for being late because of that long line outside the courthouse.
The smartphone application, free to download from the Google Play and Apple App stores, was the brainchild of District Judge David Barker.
“This new app will make navigating court schedules much easier and more convenient for attorneys and citizens,” he said.
It is great to see courts starting to get on the bandwagon, but its only a beginning:
Any other ideas?
And, how are we going to get courts to move on these potentials. We are woefully behind the private sector.
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