Access to Justice Meeting the Needs of the Self-Represented Litigants Executive Summary

ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This project was developed with grants from the State Justice Institute (SJI-00-N-258), the Open Society Institute (No. 20001562), the Center for Access to the Courts Through Technology, and the Pritzer/Galven Match of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The points of view expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the SJI, the OSI, the CACTT, the JWC, the Chicago-Kent College of Law, the Institute of Design, or the National Center for State Courts. ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1 Project Background......................................................................................................... 2 Failure of Traditional Responses ................................................................................ 3 A New Approach to System Reform .......................................................................... 4 Project Methodology....................................................................................................... 5 Barriers to Access for Self-Represented Litigants.......................................................... 7 Scarcity of affordable legal services ........................................................................... 8 Inherent complexity of the court system..................................................................... 8 Restrictions on litigants............................................................................................. 10 Redesigning Court Processes: The Access to Justice System ..................................... 11 Diagnosis................................................................................................................... 12 Logistics.................................................................................................................... 13 Strategies................................................................................................................... 13 Resolution and Enforcement..................................................................................... 14 Collaboration............................................................................................................. 15 An Internet Prototype of the Access to Justice System ................................................ 16 Conclusions and Next Steps.......................................................................................... 18 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Introduction In September 2000, the National Center for State Courts, the Chicago-Kent College of Law and the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design began an 18-month research project to improve access to justice for self-represented litigants. The project began with a premise that many of the barriers that confront self-represented litigants do not arise from the litigants’ failure to formulate appropriate goals and objectives in resolving legal problems and disputes or from the factual or legal complexity of those problems and disputes. Rather, they stem from the inherent complexity of the courts’ own procedures and administrative requirements. The primary objective of the project was to redesign court processes to eliminate or drastically reduce this complexity, and thus permit self-represented litigants to resolve their legal problems more effectively. Funding for the project was provided by the State Justice Institute, the Open Society Institute, the Center for Access to the Courts Through Technology, and the Illinois Institute of Technology Pritzer/Galven Match. This document summarizes the major findings and recommendations of the project. It begins with some background about the issues and concerns that initially led to the project, followed by a description of the project methodologies employed in each of the three phases of the project. It then discusses the research findings and products that were developed in each of those phases, beginning with identification of the major barriers to access for self-represented litigants, specific proposals for a redesigned court system that addresses those barriers, and a description of an Internet-based prototype that illustrates some of the components of the 1 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS redesigned system. The document ends with some conclusions about the potential impact of the proposed system on existing court processes. Project Background Courts in the past decade have experienced a dramatic increase in the number of filings by self-represented litigants. While the proportion of self-represented litigants remains relatively modest in general jurisdiction courts,1 filings by self-represented litigants often constitute the majority in limited jurisdiction courts, especially in domestic relations cases.2 A number of social, economic and political factors – especially the rising cost of legal services relative to inflation, decreases in funding for legal services for low-income people, and greater public desire for understanding of and active involvement in their personal legal affairs – are believed to be at the root of the increase. Regardless of the underlying cause, the trend toward self-representation has important implications for state courts. Few self-represented litigants have sufficient training or experience to present their cases in an effective manner, especially given the complexity of most court proceedings. Consequently, self-represented litigants place greater demands on the time and resources of judges and court staff (e.g., to answer questions about court procedures, to schedule and hold hearings) than litigants who are represented by lawyers. Many judges and court staff See BRIAN J. OSTROM et al. (eds.), EXAMINING THE WORK OF STATE COURTS, 1999-2000: A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE FROM THE COURT STATISTICS PROJECT 32 (2001) (in a 1996 study of civil trials in general jurisdiction courts, only 4% of defendants and 2% of plaintiffs appeared pro se). 2 In the mid-1990s at least one party was self-represented in more than two-thirds of domestic relations cases in California and in nearly 90 percent of divorce cases in Phoenix, Arizona and Washington, DC. See JONA GOLDSCHMIDT et al., MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF PRO SE LITIGATION: A REPORT AND GUIDEBOOK FOR JUDGES AND COURT MANAGERS (1998). In remarks at the National Conference on Pro Se Litigation, Scottsdale, Arizona (Nov. 18-21, 1999), Justice Barbara Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court reported that half of the cases filed in family court are entirely pro se, and over 80% have at least one pro se litigant. 1 2 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS find themselves in the difficult position of trying to provide meaningful access to justice without violating the court’s fundamental obligation to maintain neutrality toward all litigants. Failure of Traditional Responses Civil justice reform in the United States has failed to address the problems that selfrepresented litigants experience and create for judges and court staff. The traditional reform mechanism has been to give judges greater control over the legal process by imposing case management rules on attorneys. Such reforms not only sidestep the needs of self-represented litigants, but may actually exacerbate the problems of self-represented litigants by making the legal process more complex, and thus less easily navigated by litigants without lawyers. Historically, the court’s preferred approach to assisting self-represented litigants has consisted of referral programs to affordable sources of legal services, to the extent that such sources existed in the community and that litigants were willing to employ them. More recently, self-help programs have become a popular way for courts to provide relief for self-represented litigants. These types of programs generally pursue three objectives – to simplify court terminology, to standardize court forms, and to provide self-represented litigants with basic information about how to maneuver through the court system in the manner of a law-trained professional. But such programs are only marginally successful in helping them become effective consumers of court services. Self-represented litigants will always be second-class participants in traditional court processes because of the legal complexity of those processes. Provision of assistance, whether delivered in the form of simplified court forms and instructions or through self-help centers, cannot place a self-represented litigant on an equal footing with represented litigants. And, 3 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS often, assistance programs for self-represented litigants do not satisfy the sense of entitlement to act as one’s own attorney that motivates many self-represented litigants. A New Approach to System Reform Viewed in this light, the analysis suggests that the focus of court reform has been misplaced. The attention has concentrated on two objectives: diverting self-represented litigants to sources of affordable legal services that are plainly inadequate where they exist at all, and attempting to provide self-represented litigants with crash courses in civil procedure and evidence. Given the dramatic changes in the types and characteristics of cases that litigants bring to the civil justice system, as well as the scope of resources available to litigants, a more productive approach is to redesign the court system with an eye toward making it less complex and more responsive to user needs. This was the approach proposed by the National Center for State Courts and the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law and Institute of Design. With funding by the State Justice Institute, the Open Society Institute, the Center for Access to the Courts Through Technology, and the Illinois Institute of Technology Pritzer/Galven Match, they undertook a project to examine court processes and to recommend modifications to eliminate or reduce procedural barriers to access for self-represented litigants. This unique partnership brought together the expertise of the NCSC in court management, of the Institute of Design in human-centered systems design, and of the Chicago-Kent College of Law in the use of technology in the justice system. The primary goals of this 18-month project were to design a court system that meets the needs of self-represented litigants effectively, that is sustainable, scalable, and adaptable to the changing needs of the courts, that preserves basic constitutional 4 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS guarantees of equal protection and due process, and that upholds fundamental obligations of judicial neutrality and the institutional interests for organizational efficiency. Project Methodology From the beginning, the project was designed as an interdisciplinary effort with three major objectives, which took the form of tasks or project phases. In the first phase, which took place from September through December of 2000, project staff identified the major barriers that impede access to justice for self-represented litigants. This objective was accomplished through direct observation of self-represented litigants as they tried to resolve their legal problems in five jurisdictions: the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, Illinois; the Lake County Circuit Court in Waukegan, Illinois; the 20th Judicial District Court in Boulder, Colorado; the Delaware Family Court; and the Superior Court of Ventura County in Ventura, California. Teams of graduate law and design students, under the supervision of Chicago-Kent College of Law and Institute of Design faculty and NCSC researchers, gathered information about existing court procedures; conducted interviews with litigants, judges, and court staff; and compared characteristics of cases filed by self-represented and lawyer-represented litigants. The second phase of the project took place from January through May, 2001 and employed the structured planning methodology developed by Professor Charles L. Owen of the Institute of Design, a process that involves a computer-based system to aid in the synthesis of new, modified, and existing court systems that are more accessible to self-represented litigants. This methodology was chosen because it takes into consideration user needs including the cultural, psychological, and educational factors that affect them. Structured planning also 5 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS recognizes key relationships among system functions, organizes large amounts of information optimally for concept development, and develops solutions appropriate to the real and natural complexity of problems.3 The stages of the structured planning process include: • Project Definition, in which a project team of law and design students investigated the issues identified in the first phase of the project, developed design solutions, and converged on the solutions that optimize project objectives.4 As part of this step, the student teams also revisited the participating courts to gather more focused information for the redesign process; • Action Analysis, in which the project teams undertook detailed examinations of court functions as they related to the project; • Structuring, in which the project teams reorganized the system functions according to their potential to use components of the developing system in common;5 • Synthesis, in which the project teams evaluated the solutions developed in previous stages to determine that the proffered solutions fulfilled the functional objectives of the project as defined in the first stage and that the redesigned system performed all the necessary functions;6 and • Communication of the redesigned system, in which the project team drafted a summary of its research and recommendations for the Access to Justice System, which consists of 53 3 FOR FINDING, DESIGN. 4 5 Charles L. Owen, Design, Advanced Planning and Product Development, in STRUCTURED PLANNING: A PROCESS STRUCTURING, USING AND COMMUNICATING THE INFORMATION NECESSARY FOR PLANNING AND Id. at 6. Id. at 10. 6 Id. at 10-11. 6 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS separate components (system elements) integrated into a unified technology infrastructure.7 The third phase of the project consisted of translating the redesigned system into an Internet-based prototype for future implementation by courts. This phase took place from June 2001 through March 2002. Key project staff and advisors selected several core system elements to be developed along three levels of functionality: a conceptual model of the entire system, a demonstration of several key functions, and fully working prototype of one solution. For this phase, the project relied on the design expertise from IA Collaborative, a consulting firm located in Chicago, Illinois, to develop and pilot test the prototypes with potential users of the system. The focus of the prototype development began with a scenario about landlord/tenant disputes, but later changed to a domestic relations scenario after project staff came to recognize the relative complexity of landlord/tenant law compared to domestic relations. After IA Collaborative had developed the schematics for the prototype, project staff from Chicago-Kent College of Law developed the online prototype using ColdFusion, HTML, DHTM, and JavaScript. Barriers to Access for Self-Represented Litigants In the first phase of the project, project staff and student teams identified a number of factors that impede access to justice for self-represented litigants. Most of these factors fall into three discrete categories: The complete report, which included an Introduction, Project Charter, System Overview, System Elements, Conclusion, Appendices, and a Bibliography, is available at http://www.judgelink.org/a2j/. 7 7 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS • • Factors related to the scarcity of affordable legal services; Factors related to the inherent complexity of the court system and resulting poor quality of information about the courts; and • Factors related to restrictions on litigants’ ability to access the justice system effectively. Scarcity of affordable legal services The first set of factors is fairly obvious and well understood by the court community. Many self-represented litigants proceed without a lawyer because they lack sufficient income to hire one. In surveys conducted at four of the project sites, the proportion of self-represented litigants who reported that they could not afford a lawyer ranged from 40% in the Delaware Family Court to 73% in the Colorado 20th Judicial District Court. Moreover, many cases filed by self-represented litigants involve only small amounts of money, making it difficult to find lawyers willing to take the case on a contingency basis. Inherent complexity of the court system The inherent complexity of the court system itself also acts as a barrier to access for selfrepresented litigants. Courts have established a multitude of procedures intended both to preserve the rights of litigants and to manage the courts’ caseload efficiently. Over time, procedures that were created to address new situations or types of cases accumulate in ways that are internally inconsistent or that obscure the underlying purpose of those procedures. Moreover, many court procedures carry on long after the conditions that led to their establishment have disappeared. Although certain improvements in technology applications have streamlined customerservice functions in the business world, courts have been slow to adapt these technologies to the 8 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS justice system. For example, very few courts have established an integrated technology infrastructure capable of performing e-filing and electronic case management functions, much less permitting external users to communicate with courts or access court records. The costs involved in removing or reforming obsolete systems, and replacing them with more efficient and effective technological solutions, often exceed available funding, especially at the local level. For lay people who are unfamiliar with the evolution of court management and procedure, the administrative and procedural requirements of litigation can appear hopelessly complex. Indeed, the court system is so complex that the court itself sometimes provides inaccurate or inconsistent information. Nor is the American justice system a uniform institution. Procedures can vary tremendously from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, from court to court, and even from judge to judge. Thus, information that a self-represented litigant obtains about one court cannot necessarily be relied upon when dealing with another court. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that the American justice system is not historically a “user-friendly” environment. With the exception of law libraries, which are often hidden away in remote corners of the courthouse, most courts are physically designed to discourage individuals from being on court premises except for necessary in-court proceedings. Seating is limited, access to court records is cumbersome and time-consuming, and the physical layout of key court offices is often haphazard, inefficient, and poorly documented, if at all, with court signage or maps. It appears an intimidating and sometimes hostile environment for many selfrepresented litigants. 9 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS Restrictions on litigants The last set of factors concern characteristics of the litigants themselves. Certainly one major barrier is the litigants’ own lack of knowledge about court procedures. Neither public education nor contemporary media provide citizens with an accurate depiction of how the justice system really works. Many self-represented litigants begin the process with highly unrealistic expectations about what will happen during their case, especially the amount of time and resources that may be necessary to resolve the dispute through traditional court mechanisms. Thus, litigants with heavy employment or family commitments often find it difficult to dedicate enough time to prepare their case or learn what will be required of them, especially if getting to the courthouse to acquire this information is difficult due to lack of geographic proximity or reliable transportation. Finally, the justice system suffers from widespread distrust and low levels of public confidence generally. Self-represented litigants who are disenchanted and cynical about the justice system are less likely to avail themselves of information, advice and help they consider suspect, and are more likely to first try to make their own way through the legal system. For increasing numbers of litigants, a lack of English fluency and diverse cultural backgrounds makes the American justice system even more unfamiliar, exacerbating the level of distrust and intimidation. Redesigning Court Processes: The Access to Justice System To begin the second phase, it was important to articulate the specific goals and values that should be incorporated into a redesigned court system. Among the goals, for example, 10 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS project staff agreed that the redesigned court system should be comprehensive – that is, that it should encompass all aspects of the civil justice system – especially areas of high volume by self-represented litigants. User needs – those of litigants, judges, and court staff – were the primary focus of the project, but an important secondary consideration was public trust and confidence in the justice system. Project staff also agreed that the redesigned system should not concentrate solely on ideas that are immediately feasible, but should also demonstrate ideas that may be possible in the future through technological improvements. To this end, several of the traditional constraints on court reform (e.g., political viability and cost) were given lower priority than the quality of the ideas presented in the redesigned system. High priority was assigned to providing selfrepresented litigants with information about the court system in a timely manner – that is, when litigants are best able to appreciate to the significance of the information. Another high priority was making the underlying rules and assumptions about the court system explicit to all users. The project also incorporated several normative values in the redesigned court system. First, project staff agreed that use of the new system should be discretionary, not mandatory; self-represented litigants who choose to proceed through the traditional court system should be permitted to do so. Second, the new system should be designed to level the playing field between the litigants, especially regarding informational and educational inequities, even if doing so would decrease efficiency overall. Finally, the role of technology should be an aid to access for self-represented litigants; it should not replace human judgment or further exacerbate barriers to access. 11 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS What emerged from the second phase of the project was a conceptual design for 53 individual ideas or “system elements” in a single, integrated system, which we called the “Access to Justice System” or the “A2J System”. The system elements each fall into one of five solution areas, which correspond roughly to a chronological progression through a traditional court system. These solution areas – Diagnosis, Logistics, Strategies, Resolution, and Collaboration – are illustrated in the System Map (Appendix A) and are discussed in greater detail below. The full report is available on the Justice Web Collaboratory at http://www.judgelink.org/a2j/. Diagnosis The first phase of the project identified two fundamental obstacles for self-represented litigants, which related to their ability to properly diagnose their problems or issues in a legally cognizable framework and to evaluate their options for pursuing cases through the various mechanisms available to them. The seven system elements developed in the Diagnosis Area are designed to address these obstacles (Archetypes, Archetype Finder, Archetype Videos, and Pursuit Evaluator), as well as provide general information about the court (General Information), FAQs (Questions and Answers), and translations for non-English speaking litigants (Interactive Translator). The information provided by the self-represented litigant during this initial diagnosis stage also helps the A2J System focus and refine the information that it provides to the litigant at later stages, screening out extraneous information that might otherwise confuse litigants. The A2J System systematically captures key information about self-represented litigants to allow the court to improve its services to these litigants. 12 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS Logistics A second set of obstacles identified in the first phase of the project involves litigants’ unfamiliarity with the logistical steps necessary to initiate a case. The seven system elements in the Logistics solution area are designed for two primary purposes. The first is to educate selfrepresented litigants about the precise steps involved in filing a case, including the underlying rationale for those steps and the implications of performing those steps incorrectly, as they are taking those steps (Complaint Formulator, Informer, Submitter, Digital Sheriff). These system elements also help the self-represented litigant organize their case materials in ways that make it more apparent if he or she has overlooked a necessary step in completing the case (Physical File Management). The A2J System provides litigants with new ways of storing and retrieving records, sharing those records with the court, and accessing case-specific information from the court system (Personal Case Account, Case Tracker). Strategies Most self-represented litigants operate under the false assumption that once they have filed a lawsuit, all future decisions about the case will be made by a judge. Not only are most litigants unaware that a settlement by the parties is the preferred disposition from the court’s perspective, but many litigants also lack the negotiations skills that would lead to settlement terms that would be more attractive than a judicially imposed decision. The third solution area is intended to facilitate the ability of self-represented litigants to resolve their legal disputes with minimal involvement by the court (Recipe for a Good Dispute Resolution). Some of the system elements help litigants prepare for in-court presentations for those disputes that do require a judicial determination. Those tools teach litigants how to construct 13 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS internally consistent arguments (Logic Learner), provide litigants with information about the judge who will hear the case so the litigant is aware of judge preferences and behavioral practices during hearings (HonorInsider), and construct fair and coherent representations of their stories, their needs and their objectives (Story Builder). These tools also teach the selfrepresented litigant about what the court deems to be important, thus helping them better represent themselves (Webevidence, Heurassistant). Resolution and Enforcement The fourth conceptual area consists of 13 system elements designed to provide selfrepresented litigants with tools to resolve their cases through either mediation or in-court proceedings and to facilitate the enforcement of court orders that result from those resolutions. The mediation element (E-mediation) is an on-line tool to facilitate collaboration and negotiation between opposing parties that offers litigants the option to resolve issues themselves, to involve a third-party mediator in an on-line or live mediation, or, if mediation fails to resolve all the disputed issues, to narrow the issues for a judicial decision. The system elements designed to facilitate in-court proceedings serve the needs of both the litigants and the trial judge. Many of these system elements address physical and technological aspects of the court process – for example, by providing litigants with tools for easy access to case records (Case Card) and space within the courthouse to obtain useful lastminute information while waiting for their case to be called on the docket (Court Navigator, Legal Seat, Accord Room, Legal Lounge, Just in Time). Other tools are designed to maximize the likelihood that the trial judge will hear all of the information necessary for an informed decision about the case. These include the use of video technology to permit appearances by 14 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS lawyers from remote locations (Remote Access), the ability of litigants to share with judges the case records and other materials that have been stored on the court’s secured data system (Shared Vision), and judicial assignment policies that maximize the likelihood that judges will hear all cases related to a single family (One family/One judge). The final set of tools in this conceptual area are those designed to facilitate the enforcement of court orders and judgments. These tools provide prevailing litigants with a written order or judgment immediately at the conclusion of a hearing (Order Maker) as well as the necessary information about the location of assets available to satisfy judgments and the time and resources that are likely to be expended in enforcing those judgments (Early Disclosure, Pursuit Evaluator (Enforcement)). They also provide a mechanism for the court to facilitate payments from judgment debtors to judgment creditors, including proceeds from the sale of seized assets (Pay Trac, C-eBay®, Judgment Debtor Aid). Collaboration The last set of system elements fall in the conceptual area concerning community collaboration efforts. These tools extend the system analysis tools in other conceptual areas to plan and initiate programs that better match litigant usage and needs. In particular, they encourage greater involvement by local government and community organizations, including the legal community, to provide education and resources to self-represented litigants that exceed the capability of the courts to deliver by themselves (Community Connections, SRL Committee, Inter-Court Exchange Net, Pro Se Website Assistant). Many of these tools emphasize the importance of citizen education about legal rights and responsibilities that may prevent some disputes from requiring a judicial disposition (Targeted Promotion, An Ounce of Prevention). 15 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS Other tools provide litigants with access to local legal service providers who can assist with case preparation on a pro bono or paid basis (Help at Hand, Lawyer Patrol, SRL Services, My Mentor). An Internet Prototype of the Access to Justice System The last phase of the project involved translating the conceptual system into a working Internet prototype, the primary objective of which was to illustrate how many of the core system elements would function independently and in relation to each other. One key component of this phase was to develop the prototype in a way that would permit courts to maintain the system, expand the system to incorporate new system elements as they were developed, and adapt the prototype to meet changing needs of the courts and litigants. Compatibility with user needs was also identified as a primary goal for the development of the prototype. To ensure that the prototype was developed with user needs as a primary consideration, IA Collaborative tested several of the early conceptual designs on potential users. Based on reactions of those individuals, they learned several important lessons about the features that users might find most beneficial. For example, they learned that text-based information was often overwhelming, which prompted the designers to incorporate a great deal of iconography in their designs. Data security was a concern for many users. Most wanted to know who was involved in the Access to Justice System, and especially who would have access to their personal information. The designers also learned that many users still lack access to e-mail, making the proposed communication features less relevant than the quality of information available on the prototype. 16 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS Ultimately, the designers agreed on a graphical design that features a personalized system guide who directs the user through the system based on the user’s answers to questions about his or her immediate needs. The system itself is arranged like a road map, so that litigants can visualize the implications of choices they make and their progress through the system. The prototype also permits users to store and review documents and personal information online using password protection security. See Figure 1 for an example of a system screen. A demonstration of the prototype is available at the Justice Web Collaboratory at http://www.judgelink.org/A2J/development/Prototypes/final/ . Figure 1 17 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS Conclusions and Next Steps This project began with an ambitious agenda – to redesign court processes in a way that would increase access to justice for self-represented litigants. However, it was impossible at the inception of the project to anticipate how exactly the redesigned system would look. Would it make greater use of alternative dispute resolution techniques? Would it permit more direct access to judicial officers or less? Could it simultaneously satisfy the needs of some litigants for dispute resolution in a public forum (e.g., “their day in court”) with the needs of other litigants for privacy? Would the system be based on newly developed technologies? Or could it be built by adapting existing technologies to the courts? Although we began with a blank slate in terms of a “product”, we were guided by an overriding prerequisite concerning the process; accommodating the needs of users – that is, those of litigants, judges, and court staff – was the driving force for all proposals. And these accommodations had to take into consideration not only the technical needs of users, but also their human needs for information, empowerment, privacy, and security in the process of obtaining a fair and just outcome. These needs acted as practical constraints in the development of the redesigned court system. Given one of the initial hypotheses for the project – that the inherent complexity of court processes is a primary barrier to access for self-represented litigants – it is ironic that the project ultimately did not propose wholesale restructuring of formal policies, procedures, and substantive law. In fact, it leaves existing procedures largely in place. In part, this result stems from the need to accommodate the legitimate managerial concerns of the court system. But a secondary basis for this result is consistency with the existing expectations of litigants about how 18 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: MEETING THE NEEDS OF SELF-REPRESENTED LITIGANTS the justice system should function in an ideal setting, particularly with respect to maintaining certain institutional characteristics such as judicial neutrality and objectivity, an opportunity for a fair hearing on the merits, and established procedures to protect basic equal protection and due process rights. Doing away with these characteristics would undermine too many of litigants’ expectations concerning the validity of the justice system itself. What the Access to Justice System does propose is to expand the number and scope of avenues that litigants have for learning about and communicating with courts more effectively. These include tools for litigants to identify and correctly frame their problems in a legal context, thus making them appropriate for legal solutions, to make court rules explicit and comprehensible to people of average intelligence and education, and to empower litigants to negotiate effectively on their own behalf, to resolve problems with minimal judicial involvement, and to prepare for in-court presentations that are coherent and persuasive. The major accommodation for the justice system that is implicit in the A2J System is acceptance of the concept that litigants have a right to information about how to protect their legal interests and that litigants can be trusted to use that information appropriately without guidance, oversight, or hands-on assistance from lawyers. In the next phase of the project, the National Center for State Courts and the Chicago-Kent College of Law hope to identify a handful of courts that are willing to make that accommodation and to implement components of the A2J System in their own courts. 19