Welcome back everybody and to those of you that are just joining us welcome our next panel, which is hosted by Eliza Warrenberg and Nicole just love ski. We'll provide some necessary background information on a study done by the National Center for State Courts on Rhode Island self represented litigants. Please note that we will be discussing and referring back to this study throughout the remainder of the afternoon. As before, if you have any questions please put them in the Q&A. I am now going to turn it over to Eliza and Nicole. Hi everybody. Welcome, and thank you Whitney. Thank you so much Danielle and Zach for joining us for this short panel to introduce the NCSC study that you were both in charge of. And thank you Nicole dish left ski for joining me as a co moderator of this panel. I'm just going to quickly did Nicole is director of special programs academic affairs here at RWU law. I'm going to do quick introduction of Danielle and Zach Danielle is the managing director of the National Center for State Courts, sometimes referred to as NCSC. She has a professional focus on access to justice initiatives. She leads several large national access to justice projects for NCSC and serves as lead staff for the $11 million eviction diversion initiative, and the conference of chief justices and conference of state court administrators access and fairness committee, the post pandemic planning technology supergroup, and the blueprint for racial justices improving diversity of the bench bar and workforce working group. In addition Danielle is the co creator and a co host of tiny chats. Welcome Danielle. Zach Zarno is a principal court management consultant with the National Center of State Courts. He's working on national level initiatives to increase access to justice, including working with various court systems to improve the experience of self represented litigants through process improvement, technological innovation and system change. For the NCSC, Zach is the co creator and a co host of tiny chats, which you should all look into offering free digestible and creative short form educational videos on topics about access to justice. He was also instrumental in securing $11 million in funding to support the eviction diversion initiative and in its design staffs the CCJ CO SCA policy committee, and has authored numerous reports and resources on access to justice topics including several interactive tools. I'm so happy to see the two of you again having spent a long zoom call with you a couple of years ago. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to turn it over to Nicole just to get us started. Thanks guys. Wow the two of you sound really impressive. Whenever I hear someone's bio it's like wow I'm meeting some like access to justice celebrities and thank you so much for being here. They don't fact check those things at all. You can just say whatever you want. We might, we might, well I might, lies on short fact checked everything. Daniel and Zach, you were the principal court management consultants on a 2021 report prepared under a state justice Institute grant award to the Rhode Island Administrative Office of State Courts. You both work at NCSC, which is an independent nonprofit court improvement organization, providing research, education, information and consulting for advancements in the administration of courts. Your report assessed current efforts provide court users with meaningful equal access to the judicial process in the state of Rhode Island. The focus of the assessment was on the effectiveness as of assistance provided to self represented litigants, sometimes called SRLs. The purpose of this report was to document self help practices and NCSC is observations and findings and to provide recommendations for access to justice services that align with proven best practices and protocols for assisting those litigants who are underrepresented. I have a couple of questions, and either of you can jump in on this. Can you talk about the impetus for the project and a little bit about the process of researching and writing this report. I'll start Zach and then you can take all the things that I never will we forget so first I want to, I think on behalf of both of us we want to thank Nicole and Eliza for having us. It's a delight to be with both of you again I know we have talked as you mentioned before about the underlying report but it's a treat to be here and with all of you at Roger Williams. So the National Center, we are part of the team that is does consulting work with courts across the country. And so we do consulting as an organization from everything from case flow management projects to space audits. To family triage to back end case management systems and everything in between. Zach and I have a particular focus on really thinking about the needs of self represented litigants of litter litigants with low literacy or limited English proficiency. And making sure that the courts, especially on the civil side where we focus most of the time, understand what's going on have procedural fairness, and that we can embed the system with as much equity and fairness as we can. So we do a number of different consulting projects with courts across the country. And so the Rhode Island judiciary was really interested in taking a hard look at what was going well and what was challenging as it relates to self represented litigants across the judicial branch. And so the project had a number of different iterations before it got to us that the pandemic messed up just related to looking at e filing and then e filing like preempted the process because of the pandemic. But by the time we got to the project, it was really to take a hard look at self represented litigants where are the pain points how can the courts do better. And what are tangible things that the courts could do out of a commitment to continue with some improvement. And to do this we talked to several dozen stakeholders, several, several dozen stakeholders from places like the court administrator's office technology center at the court, the folks in the clerk's office people who worked in the Superior Court or the law librarians public librarians. We talked to people at Roger Williams University School of Law we talked to people in the bar association, people in method violence coalition and advocacy group, including legal aid. So we try to really reach out to as many of the people and stakeholders that have an interest in the courts work with the courts regularly to get their thoughts and feelings and opinions on this as we crafted the report and thought up recommendations. Thank you so much for that background. So, based on your research. Can you describe the findings of the report and the obstacles for self represented litigants that you found in Rhode Island, specifically. Sure. Yeah, so we it's a fairly comprehensive report and we found stuff that didn't surprise us didn't surprise the court and is not unique to Rhode Island. We saw that there are some challenges here that many courts are facing for a variety of reasons from lack of resources to, you know, data day operations that can take precedent sometimes over the space required to take that that backwards and so I think a lot of what our role is is to be an outside observer and to really offer the court that perspective and frankly they deserve credit I think for asking us to come do that it's not an easy thing. It's a good group to come sort of take a look at how you do business and offer you advice on how you can do it better. So, but that's what we try to do and so there's eight numbered recommendations. You know, a lot of them as you will see from our background and Danielle's introduction won't surprise you in that they're focused on self represented litigants, things like increasing the number of resources available. They're collaborating with referral providers, thinking of ways to give self represented litigants a little bit more guidance as they navigate the system, not legal advice but guidance on how the process work prescription pads, you know, working structurally to set up committees or find staff or make sure that the court is mindful of the needs of self represented litigants, and then really taking a look at all the legal information they produce currently. I think about ways that can be improved or audited or, you know, just updated and refreshed, giving the new online and hybrid environment where people now have access to things both in printed form and on remote and online forms. And I think the only thing I would add is that we got really valuable information both from within the court system about pain points they were seeing in specific processes. But we also got really valuable insight from community participants, members of the public in Rhode Island and public librarians and nonprofits about pain points that court users were experiencing and confusion that further underscored the need for things like improved communication website content, etc. So what I think was nice about this was it was a 360 degree scan of the courts, both within the courts but also outside of the court system about how people experience it. Thank you. Zach, can you just clarify what you mean by prescription pads. Sure. It's sort of a fun term that we use. Really the idea here is, when you are using the court system as a self represented litigant, you're under a variety of stressors. It's a complicated system. You're probably dealing with a legal issue that's very important to you that can have great consequences. And so, while you might be able to read something or have a clerk tell you something. It's hard to keep in mind and track of all the things you need to do. So we really like the idea of something that's cheap and easy to implement for the courts. I mean, it's really useful and tangible for a self represented litigant. So imagine a doctor writing a prescription and hanging to you. You don't have to remember the name of that drug you don't wrap the, you know, it's just kind of there in your hand. If you go to the clerk's office and they say what you need to do is you really should call legal aid or you need to form to just check a box or write it down or have some kind of takeaway document that a person could bring with them to that next step. So it's a little bit of a record for them as to what they've done and what they need to do, and it kind of takes the temperature down a little bit because you can hold on to that you can look at it you can refer back to it and have to remember every single detail and a moment in your life and you're probably under a lot of different stresses. And the other thing we, this is an idea we first stole from Ramsey County, Minnesota, but then have worked to implement and a number of different courts across the country on both women at the center and when we've worked for courts but what's additionally nice about a resource like a prescription paddle though it certainly doesn't have to be that is, it's a wonderful training tool for existing court staff to ensure consistency in referrals because everybody has the same information. But it also can be court based and community based. So the way we like to do it is it's a double sided paper and on one side of the page are court based resources where to make photocopies. And where are e filing stations where zoom rooms if you need them. Where can I get a copy of my rap sheet, things that you might need to complete court business, or their court based resources does the bar have a referral drop in clinic, etc. And then on the backside of the page could be referrals where you're sending people outside of the court. So, what are the federal court information because if somebody comes in seeking bankruptcy information for example having or immigration information you can know easily where to send them. And then community like bar and legal aid resources or perhaps law school clinics that people should avail themselves to so it's trying to think really broadly and then in a couple of communities. We've encouraged them to translate those same prescription pads into multiple languages so that at least in your most commonly spoken languages, you have an easy way to refer people to get help. Hi, I'm Danielle. I like something you said, which is that the courts should be like sort of lauded and appreciated for holding up that mirror to themselves. As we go through this entire day of really critically talking about access to justice. I think it's important when an organization, a state organization, like really says, Hey, let me take a look at what's what might be working and what might not be working. Because it is easy for people to throw pebbles it is harder for an organization to take a deep look at itself and sort of subject themselves to criticism. But you know when there's this sort of difficulty there's also growth and change and I think you know this is this great example of being on the right path. To expand and improve upon current access to justice efforts and SRL services. Your report as you mentioned contained this range of recommendations. One of them was greatly increased the number of self help resources available by utilizing a multimedia approach. And the other as we just discussed was creating a prescription pad and or SRL information packet. Can you talk a little bit about those recommendations in particular. Yeah, I can start. I mean, I love that we have this multimodal opportunity. There are so many different spaces that we're interacting with court users now that didn't exist in a meaningful way, even three or four years ago. So zoom is a great example of that. If someone was waiting say for a webinar to start but you wanted them to find out more about certain information or places they could go look for resources or how to apply to attend Roger Williams University you have that virtual board that's just kind of sitting there and what we often see is to please wait for meeting will start soon but you can actually modify that and customize that so that's an example of now that people are interacting with the court for this medium. That space that they own that they often underutilized and can be utilized in all kinds of ways it could send people to resources it could send them to referral partners could do all sorts of stuff. Likewise, some people learn best by hearing something from people learn best by watching the video some people learn best with the checklist some people learn best by reading the PDF document. All those are now available, right they can be hosted online they can be printed out. You can use the QR code to put on a physical piece of paper a virtual resource someone using a smartphone scans it and they can watch a short video to explain the very form they're looking at for example. Everyone doesn't learn the same way and all these resources are right for every person. But if you have a multimedia opportunity, and you have a communication need, I encourage courts everywhere to think about which ones of these pieces are they using to the best and highest ability of their other staff, and of the ability of that medium. If we have an interactive place with the interactive there. So, I just want to touch on what I see is these two different parts of how courts can better serve self represented litigants the things that you've just described are like litigant facing. Information in different ways of presenting that different ways of accessing that to try to kind of cover everything but on the internal side. There are some issues of, you know, arcane language was one of the things that Martha Minow talked about earlier. Civil procedure issues, things that, you know, no matter how clear the monitor is in the hallway that you're viewing or the, or the prescription pad. Those things might still trip up a litigant or as you said in the report that you know if you don't file that divorce order, you're not actually divorced. Can you talk a little bit about what we need to do internally in order to facilitate the clear communication with litigants who are unrepresented. So I'm really bullish on what I call process simplification but it, it's really, it's a topic that we really steal from the corporate sector. It's thinking about all the steps in a particular process, mapping it out in a really detailed way and then asking the hard questions about are all of these steps purposeful and necessary, and is the right person doing it and is it clear. And then trying to refine as much as possible so it doesn't mean necessarily eliminating steps but making sure that the steps that you do have make sense. And I know you have kept an alternator on a panel, a bit later and I learned a lot both from being part of the self representative litigation network and the process simplification committee that existed and may still exist as well in thinking about this. And so, take the family law example isa that you gave a bit earlier I mean if you were to map the whole process. It's clear that for at least some percentage of litigants it was not clear to them, what they needed to do, and as a result. Now you can change that by improving the instructions or making it clearer of what they have to do, or you can question whether you even need that step. Can that happen from the court instead of the litigant. And so my favorite examples of process simplification are where you go back to the spirit of what the step requires, and decide how to best achieve that aim. Again, you know, for example, in Alaska, I mean my favorite one, which I hope I'm not stealing Catherine's thunder for later but like my favorite example is in the Alaska courts they looked at on service of process by publication, which to me is a step in all different areas of the law where it doesn't make a ton of sense I get why we do it. There is something intellectually right about making sure that we don't file go through a lawsuit where no one has had the opportunity to be heard on the other hand, publication in a legal newspaper is probably not a fantastic way to meaningfully try to get to the point that you can't find their address, I mean, I am a lawyer in a couple of states, I cannot tell you a single example of a time that I've ever looked in a legal newspaper, but in the service of publication ever. So I have a very hard time believing somebody who isn't an attorney would also go to a daily waffle and weekly waffle and to do the same. And so I think it's an example of a step that we asked litigants to do that is expensive and burdensome. And I don't think it gets what we want and so what the Alaska court system did is they built a website. And that's part of their court website where they post it, it's still highly imperfect right but it gets the underlying point is still there, it is sharing information publicly if you cannot find them, but it's eliminating a cost, a step, and a burden on litigants and I think there are opportunities in the court system to take a critical eye to what steps might or might not be necessary and what is the true purpose of those steps and does it make sense and so our reports kind of scratches the surface in a couple of different examples in different case types of at least initial pain points that bubbled up really quickly but my guess is any court system across the country if you were to apply that level of rigor you unearth all sorts of ones. And the last thing I'll say just while I have the floor and the soapbox, we worked in a, in a Midwestern state, looking at a family law process in that jurisdiction. And we're gobsmacked to learn you know like everyone who's in the system is very comfortable in what the system is and what the steps are. But the, the divorce process in that jurisdiction had a very rigorous scheduling order requirement that he did not complete a robust scheduling order about like when discovery was going to be complete when you were going to exchange all of your substantive motions by didn't complete that paper within 90 days of filing the case was automatically dismissed by the clerk. But the only way you knew such a scheduling order was required was you've got a letter and eight point font from the court administrator's office detailing that you needed to do this. And then a separate body just dismissed the case, but you could be in the middle of court ordered mediation, while your case got dismissed from under you and none of the entities were talking with one another so like mediation was sometimes to the court, who also wasn't talking to the clerk's office and so I guess I say this not because I want to like, but to say as a way of comparison to Rhode Island like any jurisdiction if you apply a really close lens has room for improvement. And so I take it as a really encouraging sign that the judiciary has not only started that process but also has committed also camera is going to be next panel to and, you know, like in her new role you're really concretizing someone to really have the institutional muscle not just to take a snapshot in time but to really think about how to institutionalize change. Oh, I love that. Thank you. Danielle, can I ask a follow up question. Did you say eight point font. Yeah, it was outrageous. Okay, sorry, Eliza. I just like super wanted to make sure I heard, like I can that is the best practice but I just wanted to make sure. I mean, the whole thing was just written in like the way jargon. And, you know, it was written by and for attorneys who kind of knew how to crank these out. But if you were a self represented litigant I mean, you would just ignore it I mean the other thing from this other jurisdiction bash them for a little bit longer. And I think the stress of getting divorced in that jurisdiction if you had children was like 16 steps, most of which had to happen physically in person and they happen to have them during business hours. Every single one of those initially was put into place for really good reasons right like we want people to make sure that they have an opportunity to mediate that they have an opportunity to avail themselves of parental parental education but when you sandwich it all together a lot. I mean, especially when a lot of people don't have paid time off, let alone 16 paid days off, and who wants to spend all of your paid time off getting divorced, you know as opposed to doing other kinds of restorative things too and so I just think courts in general and Rhode Island wouldn't be unique in this sense, really need to think about what are the needs of the court users and as are every single thing we are doing necessary. I just want to underscore one piece of that very briefly because I, Daniel explained the potential and the outcomes and why this is important so well. The piece I like also is that it's really kind of easy to do that the map of process will be the part of a journey towards improving a process or explaining the process but to actually get a sense of what's going on. You usually just take the handful of conversation, which, to me, understanding the financial constraints and the time constraints and the resource constraints that both advocates and courts are under to be able to do something that powerful and that kind of inexpensively is really worth reminding people as a tool. If you talk to someone in this department, someone in that department and someone in that department and compare, you'll very quickly see where there are incongruities and differences and misunderstanding and eventually when you compile all that talk to a couple more people you have a very clear understanding in relatively short time where those pain points which pieces don't make sense, or do they understand it. As far as we know the process has that act but over here they don't even know about it. And so you can really get that kind of groundwork done in a manner of weeks. No, that's great. So we'll be talking with you about the report and your recommendations throughout the afternoon in my panel, the panel that I'm moderating later and Nicole is moderating. But we thought it would be good to set the stage a bit for those panels. Your report states ideal general legal and procedural information is written in plain language, and quote, and quote public facing websites and materials should strive for a fifth grade reading level or below and quote. Can you talk a bit about why this is important and what you discovered in Rhode Island specifically. Yeah, I'll start. I'm a huge fan of plain language like Daniel I'm also a lawyer I never learned Latin. I think it's incumbent on us to make sure that a system designed to facilitate dispute resolution amongst normal people, speak to them like normal people. Anything can be written in plain language and that doesn't mean you're removing context nuance or understanding it just means you're being more precise. We recently created a brand new resource actually out like as of last week. You go to ncfd.org slash plain language. It's a plain language glossary and I like the framing of it a lot or calling Lonnie summer did a fabulous job on it. It's used it not that. So don't say forcible entry entertainer, because most people don't know what that means, say eviction. I mean, and these are on their face relatively simple kind of changes the court can make and there's some challenges along with those simple kind of examples, but writing clearly expressing things clearly and understanding who your audience is, and really make a difference. Most people using the civil court system and most case types do not have an attorney representing them. So unless you would say who is your customer, your court user is typically a person who is not trained in the law. And if that's the reality of your institution then you should work to make sure your institution is meeting those customers where they are, which ties back to our earlier conversation about multimodal communication as well, but removing legal jargon removing legal leaves removing Latin, you can quite clearly express all the things you need to express without using any of those. So I look in addition to plain language and I put the link, someone asked. Oh, so I put it in. I don't have the ability to chat it, but it's in the Q&A if you look to Kathleen's question you'll see it, but it's we can send it around after two I believe right. Yeah. And then to the content of the page, it's also like white space, and if you can use visuals sometimes really trying to make it both accessible in content and also in the way you process the. It's so the fifth grade reading level how did you come up with that. Reading levels are complicated. There are multiple tests and multiple ways to test it. You know, I think it's sort of generally accepted that like an average newspaper somewhere in the eighth to 10th grade reading level. So we shot for lower than that and we think that's really important to be mindful again of who your users are. There are a number of literacy studies and surveys that have happened in this country throughout the years. There are some quibbles about methodology and about, you know, representation and all that sort of thing so I'm not going to pretend to know more about that than I do but I will say that for us in our team we really think about fifth grade ish. Again, you don't want to lose nuance and you don't want to lose meaning and you can write very clearly at those levels without doing either of those things. But if the newspaper is probably a little bit aspirational for some people, we think you should be shooting for something below that. Just curious, have you seen law schools and or law students getting involved in in these efforts to improve the interface between courts and self represented litigants. There are a number of law schools that have designed clinics across the country, University of Utah and Stanford and Suffolk come to mind. Let's say the University of Utah is an example where the clinic is really trying to think about how to communicate clearly with legal information to Utah residents in a really succinct and plain way. And they've done a lot of really wonderful examples in a very short tenure I think the clinic has only been around a year or two. And they have a nice relationship with the Utah judiciary and some of the key staff in Utah who oversee the self help centers there to develop content. Stanford has a really fabulous legal design lab that has done similar work all over the country. Most recently with a focus on eviction but they've done a lot of different kinds of things like that. I think having outsiders to the courts but people who are very familiar with that courts processes are an invaluable partner. The access to justice problems are not going to be solved by the courts alone. They're going to have to be solved by a much larger community. They're going to have to have multiple different stakeholders who are able to contribute different things I think it is all for the good. And I think there is something really helpful about having people who are just themselves learning the law, have to figure out how to explain it in a way that would be accessible to them, or to them, you know, two years and more connected to this being new. It's often a lot harder to get somebody who's been practicing for 20 years to take it back down to a level that would be understandable. The other thing I'll say is a lot of lawyers and court staff like to ensure that they're providing information that addresses the most gnarly individual twisted example of something that might happen. They want to be 100% accurate all of the time. And so if there is one percent of people who need to do it a particular way then we're going to lay all of it out just in case. And I think most legal information needs to hit the majority of people and that you can it's totally okay to have a disclaimer that says like, if your stuff is more complicated like you got to talk to someone like this is we're trying to hit down the middle. And so I think we have seen really great examples of that. So, and we, one of our most recent colleagues actually is a recent brand from the University of Utah so we can test his incredible acumen. I think much of which got refined while in law school. I think some back to reading levels and back to sort of process mapping another piece of that is for a user testing. So, does your document does your thing. You can use a mom test, or your fifth grader test, or your neighbor test, or your community college student test, just as you can process that relatively inexpensively you can also use your test relatively inexpensively by getting a group of people together for a very short time, and just saying, what do you think of this, what part don't you understand which parts did you struggle with complete this task using the funding system or fill out the form correctly to get a fee waiver. Like if 90% of them go I don't know what to do on box X, then you should take a hard look at box X right it's very similar to that process improvement thing but so law students are great for that but I would go to the community college to the fifth grader to your neighbor to your mailman to your barber to the person you get your fish from at the grocery store every week you know like whoever that person is that you have a relationship where you could just give them something and say what do you think. Because as Daniel mentioned it's hard for those of us in the system to pull ourselves out of it and get that fresh perspective and those fresh eyes, or to ignore the gnarly situation that happened. And we saw it happen 12 years ago and so we've been designing everything for that possibility ever since that that anecdotal adapter right like when 90% of the people really just needs to know these top three things. I also think it's hugely valuable to the students who are about to go into practice in their on their own to be able to explain in really concrete ways what a process is or what people should do is a skill that will benefit you whether you work for a court or you have your own practice or you work at a law firm, or you're advising a corporate business like being able to speak plainly just kind of will help you, also. That's great. Nicole, did you have anything else you wanted to know I'm excited to get to our afternoon conversations and follow up on all this. So I think our time is almost up. There might be a question or two. Nicole and I are both so grateful for the work that you've done here in Rhode Island and the work that you do nationally and for your willingness to share this information with us today. The stage is set for our future conversations we look forward to digging into solutions more specifically in our afternoon panels and we're grateful to you for your willingness to participate in more than one panel today. So thank you for that. Do we have questions. Whitney. We are none right now but if anyone has any questions, just put them in the Q&A. We have like about five more minutes. Zach and Danielle for right now. We have a quick plug while we wait. This is, this is the website where you can find nearly all the stuff we work on. No say it slowly and it's easy to remember it. You can find stuff around remote hearings and hybrid hearings. You can find stuff around appearance rates. You can find our tiny chest. Everything that you would want that we spend our time working on it is all there and so if you're curious about this stuff, then that's the place to start. We hope you are curious. I have a question. I'm kind of a fan girl. Can you tell us about tiny chats. What do you want to know. We do them ourselves in the room you're looking at us in right now we do it over zoom. It is low budget, which is kind of a theme of ours we believe that a lot of this stuff you can do scrappy. We dream up ideas together on zoom or one of us will text the other one be like you'll never guess what I just saw on TV and it reminded me of X and now we should do something like that. But really, from like listening to the courts and talking to folks like you about what is going on. Where are their gaps and what people need and thinking about how we can provide a different way, getting back to the multimodal communication of conveying some of these topics in a fun and hopefully digestible way. We're not going to give you everything you could ever need to know in an eight minute tiny chat but we'll give you enough to get you started and point you in the right direction. And I will tie tiny chats to Peter's question in the chat about kiosks, which is, we did I think one of my favorite tiny chats ever about kiosks where we were just like, so we're asking for myself, I am a child of schoolhouse rocks. I wanted to make digestible interesting information at the beginning of the pandemic that I would want to watch that wasn't a webinar and Zach is super creative and much funnier than me and like we made this and so we have an eight minute tiny chat about kiosks that talks about best practices. And we decided to be sea captains in part and also look at a magazine called sea captain quarterly to take essentially a cosmo quiz about kiosks. And like I was crying laughing Zach had like a pipe and a crazy hat at the end and he reads a poem about like sea captains oath to kiosks. But if you're at all interested we can put that in the chat and it's a wonderful teaser into tiny chat should you be interested and you should try it because we send fun goodies to. Yeah, that's a good example of the madness that is a tiny chat. Do sea captains have anything to do with kiosks. No, but is it a fun way to convey that and did we get to dress up and wear costume. Yeah. And really isn't that what's most important. I love that you're modeling for the rest of us, how to communicate in sound bites and with ease. Part of me is wondering if there are people in the audience, especially law students who might not know the difference between a kiosk and help desk and a lawyer for the day and I'm just wondering if you, you know could kind of quickly explain what what those differences are and what the spectrum of court based self help resources are. So when you think of like a continuum of in the medical context like needing medical help from like I need to tie on all and call me to the morning to brain surgery. There are different kinds of self help that courts can provide to and so the first could be just like static information on the website right like information you can read whenever you want and look at and then maybe you don't have access to the internet or you're only have it on your phone or having a place like a kiosk where you could access the information on the website maybe you can also e file if that's permissible or print if you need to write something down. Maybe it's a zoom room that's in like a soundproof area so it's a little nicer than a traditional kiosk but now I can actually plug in headphones and I can participate remotely in my court proceeding or I can zoom with a legal advice office that I'm in Bristol but the only self help centers in Providence I could zoom with them. And then, and so and then to a full service self help center that might have kiosks or also a little zoom rooms but also you can talk to a human being who can help you with information, maybe it's a self help center that also has legal clinics associated with it so I can get information but I can also get access to a lawyer for brief advice and so, or maybe I can get connected to a pro bono lawyer is going to take my case, all the way through so we're kind of, that would be like the brain surgery analogy right like you'd never want to do that on your own so those would be in my head anyway. I think we need to lay out for a cell phone, but that's really helpful. Thank you. I think we need to wrap up. Nicole, thank you for being my fearless co moderator and Danielle and Zach Thank you so much again. Thank you. See you at the next session. We are going to take a short break. We will be back at 2pm for our next panel which is our accessibility in the courtroom panel. Thank you. So, maybe we'll just get started. I know I don't want, I want to be respectful of my panelists time and I'm confident that Judge Smith will will be able to join us soon. My name is Eliza Vorenberg. I'm director pro bono and community partnerships at RWU law. My pronouns are she her hers. And I wanted to say good afternoon everybody. I am really excited to join this wonderfully knowledgeable and committed group of professionals working in the access to justice space. I also want to say, of course, that access to the courthouse includes physical and language access but also access to the necessary legal information and assistance for those without representation. The issues are innumerable and extensive and we can't possibly cover them all in the next hour or so. So by way of disclaimer. These conversations will continue after today's panel after today's symposium because we could spend weeks talking about them. These issues. So today we're going to focus on the specific issues that are facing self represented litigants and those with language barriers and disabilities. So let me just to clarify, we're going to focus on civil issues and not criminal. So you heard in the previous panel from Danielle Hirsch and Zach Sarno about the issues that they discovered through the National Center for State Court study. Let's dig into some of those issues. And what's being done and can still be done to improve access. But first I'm going to do a brief introduction of our panelists. I'm going to start with you Tamara. Tamara Rocha, Esquire directs the Rhode Island Supreme Court's access to justice office which oversees the judiciary's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act the ADA, the office of court interpreters and services for self represented litigants. Chief Justice to tell said in announcing the creation of the office quote among the judiciary's challenges that have been starkly evident to me as chief justice is the rising number of self represented litigants in our courts and the need for equal access to justice for our citizens with little or no financial resources in civil matters. You can think of equal access as being for those litigants who cannot afford to pay for legal representation. It also includes prompt and effective language services for those who do not speak or understand English, as well as a combinations for people with disabilities. The office will help coordinate these and other attributes of true access to justice and quote, and I've had the pleasure of meeting with Tamara and I'm very excited for her new role here in Rhode Island. And I'm looking forward to having you on the panel. Dr. Hirsch has a professional focus on access to justice initiatives. She's the managing director of the National Center for State Courts. She leads several large national access to justice projects for NCSC and serves as lead staff for the $11 million eviction diversion initiative. The conference of chief justice is in conference of state court administrators access and fairness committee the post pandemic planning technology supergroup and the blueprint for racial justice is improving diversity of the bench bar and workforce working group. In addition, Danielle is the co creator and co host of tiny chat something you should all visit. Catherine alternator built the self represented litigation network. Into a broad international network of justice system and allied professionals who are creating innovative and evidence based solutions that self represented litigants have meaningful access to the courts and get the legal help they need. She now serves as a consulting senior strategic advisor and guides SRLN's many activities designed to grow the justice system ecosystem and strengthen each part of the legal help continuum. Before joining SRLN in 2013 Catherine spent her career in Alaska, initially as a trial court law clerk and then as a legal aid lawyer. Then she joined the Alaska court system as the founding director of the nation's first comprehensive phone and internet based court help center. In 2008 she established a successful unbundled practice and founded the first unbundled law section of a state bar. Catherine is a frequent speaker and serves on numerous advisory bodies, including the advisory committee for voices for civil justice, village capitals, justice tech advisory board and the National Center for state courts. Justice for all project. She's also a non resident senior fellow at the Georgetown Institute for technology law and policy Catherine received the National Center for state courts distinguished service award in 2019 for her work to improve access to justice. Nellie large is a third year law student at RWU law and she has been a regular volunteer on the eviction help desk in Providence prior to law school Nellie worked as a program assistant at help USA home base. Nellie's career here at RW law has included extensive pro bono and public interest involvement. Last but not least, welcome, your honor, welcome, judge Smith. I'm sorry for the technical difficulties. Judge Christopher Knox Smith joined the district court in 2019. Before that he represented in urgent clients facing misdemeanor and felony charges at the state public defender's office. He graduated from RW law and 20 set 27 2007 and earned an advanced degree focusing on environmental and natural resources law from the University of Oregon's full of law in 2008. Justice judge Smith is on the committee on racial and ethnic fairness in the Rhode Island courts. Finally, judge Smith sat in courtroom three during the eviction help desks first year and a half at the district court in Providence, and was instrumental in facilitating the introduction of the help desk. But we'll talk a little bit more about the help desk later. Welcome everybody. I'd like to give each of the panelists a few minutes just to make some introductory mark remarks. And I will give you a couple of questions just to think about as you make your introductory remarks was starting with Catherine. Can you give us a sense of civil access to justice in this country. Why so many. Why we have so many unrepresented litigants, who they are. What are the obstacles they face in accessing justice and our self represented litigants disproportionately by pop. Thank you, Eliza and thank you to the law school for including me on this panel and congratulations on the initiative that the law review has both for this day and I understand the issue that that that you're going to have regularly every year. And to Whitney for all your amazing work getting me here today, and it's a real honor to be together with all of you. I guess it part of my role here is to help you feel like you're not alone. Whatever Rhode Island is experiencing is is not different from what we see across the country and the good news in that is that the many of the initiatives and solutions and interventions and strategies that Danielle and Zach we're talking about earlier are going to be useful here in Rhode Island. The first, I think one of the first known studies of how many self represented litigants were in the courts is, I think it was in about 1973 Deborah roadie when she was a, I don't even know if she was out of law school yet did an article in Connecticut and the family bench at that point. And I think it was about three percent or so we're self represented litigants. Fast forward to today and I like to say depending on case type and location because we, you know, we sometimes see like rural courts, where we will have 100% of the people self represented in urban courts where we have more resources we might have less and depending on case type and location on between 65 and 100% of the people in civil matters are self represented. And I think, you know, we'll talk later about many of the reasons that might be contributing to that. I think, as a, as a community interested in improving access to justice the important thing is to just, we need to accept it right we analyzing the problem of why won't get us to start embracing that will be inclusive of all people to give you a sense of proportion, and the civil legal aid, the LSC grantees legal aid offices close give or take in a year about 785,000 cases a year the about 80% or more of those cases are brief service or self represented in council so essentially their clients are self represented. However, when we look at the numbers for courts and it's very hard to you know this is these are high level guesstimating right because collecting data and courts is very challenging. But when we look at it we consistently see estimates of around 30 million people on that the courts are closing cases on self represented litigants so this burden is enormous on courts. You know, some of it is for self represented litigants financial, you know supply of lawyers all of that but more importantly, this is a moment that lets us reimagine our courts and meet our communities, right where they are, and create courts that are accountable to their communities and provide services so they are not in a mysterious place. Depending on the community there can be disproportionate representation of BIPOC individuals. And, and of course that is that is because of the historical roots in this country and how resources have been allocated. I think these reforms and initiatives that we are seeing do contribute to helping give us a more equitable society because the civil cases touch people and their their most crucial personal situations their family law, the debt cases on housing so it's a great it's a big challenge but a great opportunity. Thank you. Sarah, could you describe the access to justice office and the work that you're doing to increase access to the courts in Rhode Island. Yes, can everyone hear me okay. Yes, okay great. Thank you again Eliza for just having me here and inviting me to be a part of the conversation. I think it's wonderful that we are bringing access to justice to a spotlight into the forefront. And I think these conversations are necessary, and it's necessary to have these conversations as a community as a whole, and not just having them individually in our own organization so I really do appreciate you inviting me here today. So a little bit about the access to justice office. As stated, I am the director of the access to justice office here at the Rhode Island Supreme Court. And in that role I oversee access to justice services which include language access. That's offered through our office of court interpreters compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the expansion of resources and services for self represented litigants. So this beautiful mission here, where we say that it's our mission to ensure that all court users have meaningful access to the services programs and proceedings of the court, irrespective of English proficiency, ability to access the services program and or ability. Otherwise, and so what does this beautiful elegant mission actually mean and I think for us it's really about getting to the forefront getting to the front lines, understanding the needs of our court users and understanding the needs of those who really just want to tell their story and so when we're talking about the civil side of things we're talking about people dealing with family issues like was mentioned, whether it's potentially having a loss or the removal of a child or facing eviction matters, or the loss of property and so it's really about trying to make sure that everyone is able to fully participate, they're able to tell their story and how do we do that. The Justice Office has a huge task to take on and we're excited to take it on. We have developed kind of a four part approach in order to do this. The first and what I think is probably the most important is listening, learning and observing. We're meeting with community groups and organizations and working on a court serving instrument in order for us to better understand the needs of our court users. As mentioned previously, we had the National Center for State Court study that was also conducted and it has really influenced and helped guide us on this path of how do we truly meet the needs of our court users and consumers. Once we're able to kind of ascertain what those issues are, it's about assessing, assessing where we are right now at the court, what works well, what doesn't work, what we need to improve. We have really great programs here at the judiciary, including our language access programs that are provided by the Office of Court Interpreters. And I always have to give a shout out to my interpreters because they play such a critical and vital role in ensuring justice here at the judiciary. Each year, we handle thousands of cases and our interpreters they work tirelessly to make sure that language access services are provided to Rhode Islanders free of charge. In addition, we are working to collaborate with community partners to address the needs of self represented litigants, and of course the provision of accommodations to court users. The other things that we're looking at is making sure that we're able to assess the systemic gaps and barriers that individuals have and that may have prevented or made accessing justice more difficult for marginalized groups and being able to respond to those. Again, that assessment piece. And then final or the third prong is the implementation so we're working on different projects with our courts within the unified state court systems we've got projects with family court superior court to develop self health guides, making sure that those self health guides are readable, making sure that information is that people can understand and retain that information which I think we can get into a little later. And then also developing resource cards so people know how to contact our office so that they can receive the access to justice services. On the language access front, we are working and have identified the need for more credentialed local interpreters. And that really has to do with the fact that we just don't quite frankly have enough interpreters. We're seeing a lot of people leaving the state of Rhode Island, because of cost of living or other reasons and so trying to increase the number of our interpreters and so collaborating and working with community partners like CCRI in order to create a workforce development project where CCRI is now offering a court interpreter program. And then finally, one of the most one of the things that I'm really excited about here at the judiciary that we're working on is the revamping of our website, which is critical and crucial to making sure that we get out information to court users and that we can get that in a manner that's accessible and friendly. And then the final step is to repeat, right? So after we do all of these different things, after we listen to and look at what's going on in the court rooms, we observe it, after we do the assessments, after we implement new plans, we then have to take a moment to step back and say, okay, where do we go from here? And then we repeat the project or the cycle again. So I'm really excited to be a part of the Access to Justice Office. And I am, I'm excited to be a part of the judiciary. And I commend our chief as well as our state court administrator for even taking this on as a priority and initiative for the judiciary. Wonderful. Thank you. Judge Smith, could you describe your sense of the justice gap in Rhode Island and how as a jurist you experienced that gap? Could you describe the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Fairness and the Rhode Island courts and why it's relevant to this conversation? We can't hear you. Yes. Before I thank you, I want to apologize for all my technical deficiencies and issues. I did the test and I didn't know that I was getting assigned to this courtroom today. So I apologize, but I think we've got everything working now. But also number two, thank you for allowing me to be here and be a part of this presentation. I'm excited to be here. I think in addressing your questions, if I can reverse and address them in reverse order. So the committee for racial and ethnic fairness in the courts. The main goal is a couple of different things we're attempting to and hopefully promoting and enhancing public confidence, integrity, transparency, impartiality and access to the courts. And that is our main drive and we're doing that through a lot of different avenues, specifically self examination throughout the judiciary education throughout the judiciary and the public. A lot of public outreach going into different communities and listening to other people's issues other people struggles and how the court plays a role in that. We're looking at discrimination, we're looking at unconscious biasness and we're looking at desperate impact. And we're in, in doing all of those things we're trying to take affirmative steps to not only self monitor, but to combat these inequities and make a more just transparent and we are what Tara was saying to Mary saying we are continually repeating that so it's not a one solution fits all it's something that is changing over time. So going into those justice gaps that you talked about with your initial question. So different from my perspective. I see them a lot more on the civil calendar than the criminal calendar and one of the main ways I see that is you are not entitled to an attorney in Rhode Island on civil cases as you are on criminal matters. So typically I see that when we have pro say ladies. Certainly to me I talked about language access. And I also wanted to give a shout out to all of our amazing interpreters. They work so hard and their hours are so long I always say do you have your roller steaks on because they're always bouncing around from courtroom and courthouse. But that is a struggle that we are continually working on, making sure that everybody has that avenue and that access to the courthouse and that they have an opportunity to understand every single thing that's happening, because their liberties and their properties are at stake. But I think we do a tremendous job like anything else we can always do better, but we are making a lot of great advancements. In that lane the other thing we look at is and the biggest thing for me that COVID has really blocked to the forefront is technology. We need to reinvest in technology. We see that we have things that could potentially shut down our normal way of doing business and a lot of other courts federal courts and other things have been able to do things a lot differently than we have specifically in district court, because of our lack of ability with pros and litigants to always have the technological capabilities to handle remote hearings and other things like that. So, and all the committee is addressing all of these things and it's the overall experience of anybody that interests the courthouse, and it's the overall confidence that we can hopefully enhance in the public eye and the transparency and all of those things are under the umbrella of not only the access to justice, but addressing any of those gaps that we see. Thank you. Danielle, could you just speak to what you're seeing nationally with the state court access to justice initiatives. And what are the trends in terms of court improvements and innovations. Again, thank you for having me so I'm like a bad penny got me again. So for all of you listening sorry. I would say two things one that I am an optimist by nature and I think the pandemic has been deeply difficult for many, many people and for lots of reasons but as it relates to court innovation that has been a pretty exciting because courts by necessity had to think about how to do things differently and unlocked the ability to think about all sorts of systems differently and I think the challenge for us now is to maintain that spirit of innovation and willingness to change. But we've seen courts adapt calendaring practices to go remote which have been really positive. We've seen the ability to have hearings remotely so that you don't have to take off work necessarily for a whole day to attend your hearing etc. And then I would say generally not to make this problem more complicated but Catherine and I are part of national work. And I think that through a rubric called justice for all and thinking about the legal needs the unmet legal needs of all of our community members and that the numbers of people that come to court are a small traction of the people who have unmet legal needs more generally and either take no action or paralyze because they don't know what to do or afraid of the system or all of the above. And so there is a real challenge and a wonderful opportunity for partnerships with organizations and nonprofits and community groups and universities to think about how we increase we develop more information and share it widely so that people can use the law as a protection, not always just something that they experienced negatively. Thank you. Nellie, can you describe why you got involved in the eviction help desk, what your sense of the self represented tenants experience is with the help desk and imagine what it was before the help desk. Great, yes. Well, thank you for having me today I'm really happy to be here and to share my experience with the eviction help desk. I got involved. I was really excited when this project came about my two year. I worked in evictions before coming to law school and it's the reason why I came to law school as I wanted to be an advocate, not just support the advocacy and the office that I was in, which was help USA home base. And so when the project started at the Providence District Courthouse, it was very exciting because it had never happened before there had never been anything like that in the past. There was never a desk there was never anybody offering free legal services right there for people walking in that didn't know what was going on so I got involved because it was quite similar to the work I'd done before but I really exciting because it was brand new here and during COVID which was touching everybody and so many different ways and everybody differently. So I got involved. The experience that I see for pro say tenants every day I was actually there this morning. So it's the same thing every day you see people come in and they don't even know what the forms that they've been handed me. They don't know if this is an eviction notice or it means something else they don't know if it's a rent demand or, and just having somebody not even entering for them but somebody that can just tell them what this piece of paper is and what their rights are. And, as many of the other panelists have said, if this person doesn't speak English, there's another obstacle in their way, and getting them to a person that can understand them and be able to understand the resources to know what it's happening what it's happening and sometimes even represent the person that day be able to enter an appearance for that person and just really, even if it's just negotiating with their landlord that person's situation dramatically. I before to answer the question about before the help desk was there I can't imagine because I've only ever known the district court with the help desk but I see the confusion now, and the way that we help people even just having a basic conversation so I can't imagine how confusing it was before the desk was there because every time somebody comes in for an eviction they're having the worst day of their life. And then you have that stress and that anxiety top to the if you don't speak English and you don't understand what the forum means and they're calling your name and maybe they haven't called your name yet and just that trying to navigate the courthouse by yourself. Just seems impossible. So, yes, that's. Thank you. Thank you. And just for those who who might not know when we refer to the eviction help desk we're referring to a program that started in the early, early fall of 2021. This is an organization between Rhode Island legal services, which is our LSC funded legal services organization, the Center for Justice and the law school and the court to provide a help desk in the district court outside of the courtroom where evictions happen. Our role is to do screening and intakes with pro se litigants. There's always a supervising attorney from one of the two legal services organizations there. And so, just to give you a sense of what that is. I'd like to just start now with kind of a look at what happens before people get to the courthouse. Danielle mentioned, you know that a lot of people don't know that the issues that they're having the problems that they're they're having even lend themselves to legal remedies. But many people with civil legal issues and or cases never make it to the courthouse. Why is that. Judge Smith, do you do you want to take that initially. Absolutely. I mean, I think that a lot of people are overwhelmed about the experience of coming into a courthouse and what is required of them. I think the people understand that there is a profession that is assigned with going to the courthouse and a profession that you go through extra schooling to know how to navigate things in the courthouse. And so I would assume that there is a fear associated with that everything that we do, especially on the civil calendar is very technical in nature. Things matter. T's and I's being dotted and crossed matter. And if those things aren't sometimes a case can go south for one of the parties. So I think there is a reluctance from the very beginning sometimes to even want to step forward in a courthouse to try to advocate for a position that you might have. Mara, did you want to add anything. Yeah, I think, Jeff Smith he he's right on I think that there is a hesitation from a lot of individuals to even enter the courthouse because of maybe past experiences that they've had in the judicial system or with the judiciary whether it's been their own experiences or experiences that they've learned about. You know, and I think that even when you're talking about the limited English proficient community, there's another stress level this there. So only do you have to figure out how to navigate this legal system but you have to figure out how to navigate this legal system in a language that you're not comfortable and familiar with. And so I think it poses a huge barrier for people and quite frankly, some would rather forego getting help from the judiciary getting help from the court and seeking a legal solution to their problem and instead figuring out how they can figure it out outside of the court. Yeah. So, Catherine, why might litigants fail to seek out legal assistance. Yeah, I think, you know, we have some groundbreaking research that was done by Becky sand of her now a professor at Arizona State University, MacArthur fellow, many might be aware of her work that really helped us capture the idea that a lot of people just don't know they have a problem. Right and as Judge Smith was saying, we're very aware, you know, it's a profession right we were the ones just but we're the interlocutors to the court so to speak. But for not law trained people they're just living their life and law is entwined in that right here, you might have a divorce or custody issue or debt it's just part of your life and so they might initially see it as, I'm just having a family issue. And a legal part sort of seems like a technicality later on. And I think, because because for them, the real issue is solving the family problem. And in areas like debt or landlord tenant. Again they think, Oh, maybe this isn't so complex. And they're unaware of defenses that can be raised or obligations that are on creditors or landlords to behave in certain ways. And also finding and hiring a lawyer can be a very opaque process for the public.  Be visible in your community, be welcoming be inclusive, participate in your community so people can find you it is very intimidating to even try and find a lawyer. But at a time people have. They'd rather work on solving their problems the practical aspects of their problems than trying to hunt down a lawyer that you think, well, I probably won't even get and to be frank. The profession often struggles with a reputation with the public of taking simple things and making them more complex or ratcheting up conflict conflict and so this is another reason that as members of your community. You impact how you comport yourself impacts how your community thinks of the legal profession and we know our branches in crisis right now so you were all emissaries, you know we believe in the rule of law, and we're all emissaries to try and hold that up. And finally I'll just add the expense for full representation as we know is just, you know, off the charts for for most working people and certainly for people that are living in poverty completely inaccessible. And this is where I'm bundling comes in as a great business opportunity, not just for lawyers but also a solution for the public and it's really exciting to see you have a rule I've reviewed that and and I think law students. I encourage you to be very interested in this as you build your business practice side of your, your law practices. So, just because you mentioned on bundling, can you define that. Sure, so historically, when you you hired a lawyer to just take over your problems right you know here's $5,000 handle everything about my divorce. For those for students that are on the call have been through your ethics classes, you know that there's sort of a divide of what the lawyers in charge of strategy and but you can't do you have to have your clients consent to enter into let's say a negotiated settlement or something like that in the in unbundling what we do is we disaggregate the legal problem we break it down into all the separate tasks, and the public can hire a lawyer to do a discrete thing so a lot of getting through court and I know we've already heard a lot about it and we're going to hear more, you know, it's forms right it's filling out forms. How many copies do I make where do I mail this all that administrative work with with support self represented litigants can do very well but but they need legal advice right and so lawyers practicing at the top of their license. What are the ramifications of in a custody case if one party's moving out of state you know that's a clear cut legal issue are their defenses. And so unbundling what somebody for a more affordable rate higher for that targeted help and the litigant themselves can handle the rest of the matter. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to add in Rhode Island we, we use the term limited scope representation so anyone who's interested in limited scope representation can always take a look at our rules of professional conduct, and in particular rule 1.2 of the rules of professional conduct and that gives you a lot of information on number one, how to, how to make this a practice if that's something that you want to do, but also there's a lot of information in the commentary to the rules to really explain what are the limitations when you're entering into an engagement for limited scope representation, what you need to include in that engagement letter to your client, as well as what you need to include if the, the terms of the limited scope representation change. And I would just add that Catherine's organization has done yeoman's work nationally in promoting and bundled or limited represent limited scope representation and so that SLR is a fabulous resource that if you're interested we should check out. Wonderful. So returning to, you know why litigants might not seek out legal assistance and the barriers that keep keep them from doing that. And do you think that these barriers affect particular groups more than others. Catherine Danielle, either of you. I'll kick off and then Danielle pick up. You know I think the absolute barrier and I know Danielle can speak much more in depth in this and the work that so much of the work she's done in her career is language and disability right I mean if there's just a bar to even understanding what's going on. And certainly, you know the low moderate income folks who cannot take is Danielle reference earlier a whole day off from work to go to a hearing or possibly lose their job because they had a 15 minute scheduling hearing. But it also those are real barriers, but we have some really exciting research going on right now that that is looking trying to explore whether we can better understand how some populations are disproportionately impacted by certain types of legal matters. And you know so low income folks, housing stability right that's the easy one we can anticipate, but some of this research that is just getting underway right now is is looking at, for instance, the role of trauma in people's lives and as a predictor to the kinds of legal problems that they might face. And once we kind of think or members of the LGBTQ community being subject to certain discriminations and exceptions or people in the BIPOC community and once we kind of get that that kind of granularity to understanding it it's the opportunity for community engagement and partnerships within our community. Yeah I don't know that I have much to add there. I, the only thing that I would say is it relates to language access, which isn't always a necessarily proxy but you know I think there was real damage done. Immigration was coming into courthouses and I think there is a real, not all immigrants necessarily have LEP needs or limited English proficient needs but I think there is a lasting stigma that comes when there have been immigration enforcement sweeps in courthouses across the country and so I would be only thing I would add as a finer point about immigrant communities and using the courts. Okay, let's turn to once lit against arrive at the courthouse, whether for a scheduled hearing or a trial, or because they're faced with a legal issue that they understand can be addressed by the court. Some of the challenges that underrepresented communities face when they arrive to court include as we've discussed, language, disability, lack of information, lack of affordable legal help and representation, insufficient self help materials and lack of understanding of procedure and forms that are complicated or hard to decipher. I'm, I'm hoping that each of you can comment on these and any other challenges that I failed to mention. And then we can turn to solutions and approaches to these challenges. Catherine I'm sorry to keep calling on you but you have this national perspective that is. Thank you and my name begins with a so I've become accustomed to being called on first. And mine begins with the V so I'm always laughs. And I'll just give a sort of umbrella thought here for for our audience and then let everyone else comment on the details. It really is the lack of transparency and the public not understanding what the expectations are of them once they get to court. And people want to make judges happy nobody nobody has a desire to go into courtroom and frustrated judge, but if they don't know what they're supposed to do that is that is exactly the situation they find themselves in so you know I am somebody who just believes really strongly in the sort of be practical and educate people in the process, but focus on the lack of transparency you just they have no idea what's going on till we tell them. Yes, I was I was just going to second that of expectations you know specifically in the civil calendar, we try to put in the notices, what is expected of everybody when they come to the courthouse but in the midst of their lives and everything is called in they always don't read those notices as carefully as you would like them to do and so what I see is the biggest challenge when they come in the court specifically on the civil calendar is they're not prepared to go to hearing the day that the matter is scheduled for trial or hearing the notices say it's for hearing but that's a very specific word that has specific connotations to specific people and people who aren't in that language don't understand and typically when they do come in, it's oh well I have this but not with me. And certainly we try to be accommodating with certain circumstances to give people the opportunity but sometimes we can't always be depending on the situation and I do find that that is a huge issue, or a lot of times we'll see they have pictures on their phone but they don't want to give their phone to the landlord's attorney. Understandably I don't want to hand my phone to a stranger either, but those issues and they ultimately affect sometimes how a case results. Mellie do you want to speak to sort of the challenges that you see self represented litigants facing when they come into the courthouse and then up to the third floor in Providence. Of course, as I was, and a couple other people have mentioned just the forms not understanding what these different pieces of paper mean. And I find the fact that people walk up and get to the third floor to the eviction help desk and they don't even know if they are in court. And if they have an eviction going on, if they're being evicted and the forms all look different sometimes they say different landlords also have a way of, if it's not an eviction notice wording it very very strongly to scare someone to think that they have to be out at the end of the week or something and now having that conversation with somebody that this isn't even an eviction yet they haven't even taken you to court. And the fact that people don't even understand if they're in court or not, just that, that level of confusion, oftentimes people don't even know to go to the third floor, they'll be lost in the courthouse. So I think that that just adds to the anxiety of again it's everybody's worst day of their life they're getting evicted they they feel like they don't know where their kids are going to go they don't know where they're going to, how they're going to find an apartment when landlords want three or four months rent and you to make 70% of the, over the cost of the apartment they want that you to make an astronomical amount of money beyond what people likely make, and just trying to have that conversation with somebody that they don't have to leave today or they don't want to leave at the end of the week and I think it would be so helpful if the court could be just a little bit more clear about what's on each floor. Just in terms of if there was resources we talked a little bit about a website if there was any kind of way there could be a website that explained what these different forms mean, or how in walking people through an eviction process. Thank you. Tamara, can you talk a little bit about the ADA and the kinds of disabilities that you are seeing and trying to, you know, the ways in which you are working to make the Rhode Island courts more accessible. Yeah, definitely. So, from an ADA point of view, the majority of the requests that we receive at the judiciary are for the deaf and hard of hearing. And so, in that we receive requests for American Sign Language interpreters as well as certified American Sign Language and certified deaf interpreters. And then we also receive requests for assisted listening devices, which is something that I think is coming up more regularly. I'm not quite sure what the correlation is, why we're receiving more requests for that, but that is something that we are receiving. And I've noticed and one of the things that we're working on at the judiciary is really trying to understand the needs of that community in particular, the deaf and hard of hearing community because of the challenges that they face when they come into the courthouse. I know that, again, it's a high risk venue for them because of what is at stake if miscommunication occurs, and the consequences that miscommunication can result in. And so, trying to understand what we can do at the judiciary to help them. One of the things that, and I actually just had a meeting with a group. One of the things that is needed is additional interpreters in Rhode Island. And that's something that we are looking to continue to work and collaborate with different organizations so that we can try to figure out how we can get more interpreters in the courthouse to help provide communication for our court users that require these services. But the other issue that was raised is an understanding of the community and the community wanting for judges, attorneys, social workers, and everyone who's involved in the justice system to really understand the challenges that they are going through and that they are facing so that people can have more patience when dealing and handling these matters. And so, again, another thing that we're working on is educational opportunities for both our judiciary employees as well as going and speaking and collaborating with other organizations. Thank you. So, Catherine, do you think that the access to justice work that we're all engaged in should be focused on helping self represented litigants or on getting representation for people who aren't represented. Both, both. Absolutely both. I think you know that as Danielle was talking about earlier the power of simplification and procedural simplification and the efficiencies that that brings about not just for self represented litigants, but also for the bar, right, because when they're navigating these cases it becomes more simple as well. But also for the bench for the clerks. And you know one of I think you know when Tamra was talking about the getting the accommodations for people who are hard of hearing. One of the reasons that's a real struggle in a courtroom right is it interrupts the flow and the time you know that the judge has set aside for the hearing and the staff and you've got to stop and you've got to change things. So these process simplifications and upstream education so that when people come to the court they're prepared we don't try to sort of spring it on them. Ta-da you're here we want you to learn about what you have to do and tell us what you want to do all at the same time. And all of that. So that I think all these self, these reforms in terms of making the court more accessible for all right now. It's not just self represented litigants right it's everybody. We do need to increase access to attorneys for those legal matters that that cannot, you know, are not just going to get resolved that there really are legal arguments and get the legal advice that they need to make those arguments. Yeah. Is the staggering number of self represented litigants, an issue of any income inequality. In your view, or is it a problem with our legal system. Danielle or Catherine or anybody. I mean I think it's so many things. We're only starting to really collect self represented litigant theta in a meaningful way over the past few years but we don't connect that to a lot of other things and so I think there are self represented litigants who are doing it for DIY reasons, there are self represented litigants who desperately want an attorney but can't find one there are self represented litigants who don't realize how long a court process is going to take. And so they don't prioritize trying to find one at all, or you know, any number of other things or they live in a small town and their spouse has conflicted them out of any attorney they can figure out how to find. I mean there are so many different reasons. And, you know, demographically we have a disproportionate representation in the BIPOC community nationally and also low income litigants because a lot of times they're brought into the court system because of poverty, I mean, there's a relationship between various systems so there's a lot to untangle and we're often the courts are often downstream of a lot of upstream policy choices that inform what happens in the court, but that said, like I think there are many things that the Rhode Island courts have begun or have been putting in motion to try to address that and that nationally we have to reckon. I would just add to all of that that law reform is also part of it, it's looking at the statutes and doing simplification isn't just procedural it also needs to be substantive update our statutes to reflect the society that we live in today, not not one 100 years ago and so that that is that is a whole nother area, but that can have a huge impact. And if I could just add to it I think that these are these conversations are important again to collaborate so that we can figure out you know the different pieces of the puzzle, and then work together to really ensure that we have justice for all and that we're providing that continuum of service and that we're making sure that you know everyone is doing their part. If I can just add one last thing about self represented litigants litigants and an eviction proceedings is that oftentimes when they're brought into court. They don't even consider the idea of getting a lawyer that options not even on the table because that they don't even, they don't even factor that in as a possibility and they're having. They're not aware so oftentimes we'll see if the eviction help desk. They don't even know about Rhode Island legal services or the Center of Justice that's the first time they're being given this information is there in the court. And so the fact that they didn't even consider that they would need a lawyer only because they didn't think that would even be an option, and the power imbalance very rarely do you see a landlord that isn't represented. That power imbalance is so obvious. It's just something to be aware of how necessary the education is. Yeah. Okay. So, all of you have touched on some ways that we can make the courts more accessible the courthouse more accessible to self represented litigants to people who have limited English language. The whole range of people who are faced with challenges. But let's just dig in a little bit more and, you know, if you could share as many concrete solutions that you imagine or know about. It would be really great in the earlier panel there was talk about, you know, kiosks and help desks like what we have and in Rhode Island, but I know there are lots of models around the country and there's a full spectrum of really simple solutions to more complicated solutions and, and we will in our next panel be talking about some of the technological solutions but I would love to kind of get from all of you. As much as you can give us. All right, I've got one. Community integrations in courtrooms we've seen this a lot with eviction diversion across the country but embedding credit counselors financial counseling, social workers, public benefit screens in courthouses so that court judges can refer to those services either in the middle of a case or at the end of it. And if I had a magic wand I'd have another team of social workers that could follow after the case to see both on the landlord and the tenant side if they needed access to additional services. So that would be my magic one wish. I love that. I would definitely highlight the social worker aspect, because a lot of times when people come into the courthouse for a specific court case, while you're dealing with one thing you know that there are other issues that are arising that are being factors to them being there. And while you can always address them within the case that is in front of you. It's very important for the holistic approach. One of the things that really like about being with the public defender's office is you could address things on a holistic approach. And if we knew that there were issues outside of the criminal case, we could try to address those things housing mental health substance abuse, but from the bench, I don't really have that avenue or that context for the cases that are coming in front of me, because there are places that take a place out in the hallway, and it's only coming in front of me to enter into that situation, or to start that hearing. So I think the idea of having so dedicated social workers, especially around the civil calendar would be a huge improvement in magic one that would offer. The other thing that I think has been one of the most successful things that I've seen in terms of access has been the help desk. I think that it has 100% changed the way that we have done things on the civil calendar. Prior to COVID, when we had 120 cases a day, you know, it was really easy for people to fall through the cracks of the system, and having that help desk there really does a couple of different unbelievable things. I don't have the intent to say stated it, but you know, it gets people representation, but it also gets, gives people advice, it gives people a sounding board with a lot of times once they come in front of me they want to talk about stuff it's not relevant. And it's hard to get them to focus on what's relevant from what's actually in front of me so just having that help desk well certainly the representation is great. I mean board and that advice of hey, you're going in there by yourself but this is going to affect it. Do you have pictures let's go see if we can go to the floor. I'm out or something along those lines is huge and so if I have a man. The court has done so much I wanted to in every courthouse, you know, from 94 I know certainly it's a staffing issue, you don't have as many people as we'd like to be involved with it for a lot of postive issues but having people available in the afternoon and other courthouses and I think that that would be magical. Thank you. Love that. Anybody else. Next. So if I, I guess my magic one moment would be community outreach and being able to hit all of the different communities outside of the courthouse because I think when you go and you meet people where they are right it lowers that stress level a little bit. So I think that we should be able to get more information to them that they may not need today right but hopefully, if a situation comes up in the future, they have the information or they may say hey I remember there was a girl who came in and said something about access. Let me see if I can find that card somewhere. And, you know, Judge Smith and his committee they did a amazing, amazing focus group that I think led to a lot of change in the costs and fines and so I think if we could do more of that. I think that something that our office is committed to is just trying to really engage with people outside of the courthouse, so that we can really educate them about their rights educate them about the system itself and then about what services are available and it's really helpful to have a ton of services or a ton of forms or a ton of programs if people don't know about the services that forms the programs and so we really have to make a be intentional about how we're getting in contact with people and getting this information out. That's so true. Judge Smith, can you just talk briefly about the fines and fees work of the committee and, and how that was connected to the community. Absolutely so the committee just started in 2020, but I feel like we've been doing a bunch of things that have been around for a lot longer. We have different sectors of people that are concentrating on different areas of improvement. And one of the things that came about where the cost and fines and the burden that it carries with people who are on the criminal justice system and how it lingers, and it really inhibits their ability to move on from it, long after their probation or their incarceration is over. And so, and you were one of the public outreaches and going into the community and hearing about people's real word experiences we kept hearing this underlying theme of, I haven't been on probation for five years but I'm still paying cost and fines that I still have. And if I don't go I'm worried that a bit more of an issue for failing to appear to make a payment even though we don't issue warrants for not paying it's for not being somewhere where we're supposed to be but just that additional burden that was always over them. And we do have certain statutes on the books that cause us to look at a person's financial situation, prior to opposing costs and fines are soon as readily available thereafter. And so we were able to working with the chiefs and the administration at each court set up a program and different events where people can come to communities and we can take every case on an individual basis to start releasing some of that pressure from some of these people who have tried to move on and better their lives and so it's been a really successful program in superior court they're doing it on more of a routine basis they have a little bit more resources, and the way that they do cost and fines a little different than we do in district court, the district board started doing it as well. And I don't have the exact numbers but it's upwards of $100,000 that have been permitted to release that tension on individuals in society. And it's been a tremendously powerful initiative and the collateral consequences in the civil area are, you know, extensive so in the work that I've been doing I've seen those fees and fines really keep people back in other areas that are civil, you know, kind of housing licensure and so that's just been such a great, great program. I would also mention that there's a wonderful webinar that is on the National Center for State Courts website that highlights the work that our judiciary did with the cost and fines and so I don't know if Danielle has that or not but I'm sure that we can put that and get that out to the attendees if they want to take a look at it. Our judge DuVos, she was very instrumental in it as well as Judge Meadows and they give a great overview in that webinar of what led to, led to those actions following. So we're, we are closing in on on time here but I want to be sure to address this issue of access to justice commissions. Rhode Island is one of fewer than 10 states in the country without an access to justice commission and I was hoping that our panelists and perhaps Catherine could talk about how developing an access to justice commission in Rhode Island could be beneficial with respect to these issues that we've been touching on today and Danielle, you may have thoughts on that as well. Thank you. I'm actually going to just defer to Danielle who staffed access to justice commission on the only note I would say before she talks about how important and really what they can do and what it would do for Rhode Island is I don't think it is a condition precedent in order to do access to justice reform. The work when I was first hired by the Alaska court system in 2001, there was not a commission that that was doing this work and it was the momentum of just the court doing that opening, you know, the doors up and really being more accessible to the community it changed the name of the clerk's office to customer service. And that simple name change actually began to shift the mindset of everybody in the system and built self help services. That creates the momentum that can help really launch, and then combined with the fairness and access committee that you have and that's what all we had in Alaska back then. But that can really help the momentum to get a commission but I'm going to defer to Danielle because she was the master of building one. No, I agree 110% with Catherine's, you know, like at a certain point it's semantics but there is whatever it's called the brain together of the bar, the courts, the legal funders, the practitioners together in some kind of forum to communicate and collaborate effectively and I would also add community partners to our really vitally important past is a key to success. I think for I was, as Kevin mentioned part of the Illinois access to justice commission and I think at least while I was there our biggest contribution was really deciding what everyone's lanes were and how kind of to a racy matrix like who was responsible for what things and to make sure everyone knew what everyone else is doing that that everyone wasn't focused on the exact same thing. So for example, the Commission in Illinois was connected to the Illinois Supreme Court so the Commission's focus was going to be on rules processes and things that happened in court. What happens in the court, whereas the bar was really working to get increased advocacy at the state and federal level for improved legal reform funding for legal aid and pro bono. It's very different from, for example, the IELTA foundation which was actually giving grants to legal aid so understanding everyone's role within the ecosystem and having a place to decide what is the stuff we all have to come together to decide and what is the stuff we just need to share with one another is really valuable. And so whether that's called the Commission or that's a committee. I wouldn't let semantics get in the way of substance. That's very helpful. Thank you. So I think we've run out of time. I want to thank each of you to Mara, Catherine, Judge Smith, Danielle and Nellie for spending this time and your willingness to participate in the panel but also for all of the critically important work that you're doing in this area. It's, it's, I just am in awe of all of you and what you do. I also want to thank Whitney and Katrina for putting this symposium together for putting together this group of panelists and Chelsea for being behind the scenes and and making everything work. So, with that, I will turn it over to Katrina. Thank you all so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you again for speaking with us today. I did see that we had one question in the chat. So, I was going to ask that I do see that it has been answered by Daniel actually in the chat. And the question was, do you guys collaborate with law libraries on accessibility issues. I didn't answer that at all. I was just putting, it was the only place I knew how to communicate about the webinar that Tamara referenced so I apologize to the person who put in that question. I'm going to ask Judge Smith to talk about law library partnerships in Rhode Island, better than me so sorry Katrina I just didn't want you to think I'd answer that. I can take a stab at that one. So our law library, the director is Colleen Hannah we work closely with Colleen to make sure that there's accessibility in our libraries. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding the question are we asking about collaboration with different law light or with different libraries in general to provide information to court users or are we talking about ensuring accessibility for those who are protected under the ADA. We have Claire. So the question doesn't necessarily special but I'd love to hear your answer on either. So, as far as collaborating with different libraries just to provide information to court users, I think it's an amazing way to again go out into the community and educate our community members about what problem or what program services are provided by the court and the judiciary. We do not have any collaborations yet, however, we are always looking for more collaborative opportunities so if someone does want to invite us I'm always happy to attend, and to provide additional information to different groups. Again as it relates to accessibility within our law library over at the judiciary we work with Colleen Hannah to ensure accessibility. If anybody else has a question please put it in the chat. I did have a quick one. Maybe for Nellie. Nellie do you have any other ideas besides the help desk that might benefit those who aren't represented in eviction cases. Who are represented in eviction? Who aren't. I'm sorry can you repeat ideas besides the help desk? Yeah, like is there any other resources that you could think of that would be helpful. Definitely just it's not the eviction proceedings aren't the only confusion self represented litigants have in court that's just one that stands out to me because I spend a lot of time there but I, I think in any court proceeding, whether it's family court there's a million different things that somebody could be in a family court proceeding if there was a similar desk there. Different same with goes with criminal court just access to information it's really just about educating the community putting the resources out there so people can educate themselves on how court proceedings look like I mean I always come back to evictions but it. I don't have to be in an eviction proceeding necessarily to need to know what your rights are in your housing tenants have rights and landlords all the time take advantage of that you see self health evictions all the time which are illegal, and letting somebody know when they can bring us to against their landlord is also important. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted, I think this is a great opportunity to talk a little bit about some of the programs that we are working on here at the judiciary so I have the wonderful opportunity of working with some of our lower courts including family court and superior about how to get this information to court users how to navigate the judicial system how to navigate different processes how to navigate even court orders administrative orders and protocols. And one of the things that we're working on is again meeting people using that multimedia approach by developing videos in particular for family court, explaining how to navigate through the divorce process from start to finish. There's also process of service or service of process which I'm not sure if Danielle is still here but it's something that Zach was able to help us with and and we had a you know a call when we first started, just trying to figure out how we get this information over to court users, and then again utilizing checklist so that when individuals come to the court and let's say they're looking to file a divorce that they know exactly all of the things that they need to include and bring back to get their packet of information, and then using those prescription paths that I think Danielle and Zach spoke about earlier today. So we're in the process of developing all of these things and these packages for our court users and then again utilizing our website as well to make sure that this information is given to them both on the web, but then also in hard copy form because we know that not everyone has access to to the internet. If I could just I just want to highlight one thing that Nellie said that when we talk about it, Tamara said earlier about community outreach and getting into the community. One of the best examples that we saw, at least in the eviction calendar was the success of the remedy program and the millions of dollars that were able to go out to a people to keep their their residencies are finding new homes. But one of the things that I was most amazed about that program to find out was, I assumed that the majority of the money that was getting released from that program were two cases where evictions have been filed, or evictions are judgments have been entered, but upon speaking with people from the remedy program over two thirds of the money that was provided from that program, there was never an addiction file. And so that tells me that they were able to get that word out and that program out to people in the community prior to an addiction being initiated, which is huge in and of itself. And so when we talk about a lot of things and gaps and access, we're talking about once you get into the court system but I think for me I made a very important point when you talk about bringing the services to the community ahead of time, in the hopes that for particularly if they don't even get to the courthouse, you know, where they'll kind of last bar in a sense of all the hurdles that people have to go through but getting into the community is huge and I was just flabbergasted to hear that that much money had been dedicated to non file cases. Yeah. Well, thank you guys again so much for your conversation today I thought it was really interesting. We're now going to take a short 10 minute break. Our next panel will start at 330 and focus on the role technology plays in shaping accessibility issues. So thank you again to our panelists and to our lovely moderator, and we will see you guys soon. All right everybody so for our last session of the day we are going to be discussing technology and the current programs initiatives and different projects that are currently in place to help solve some of the barriers that we've been talking about all day. As always, if you have any questions put them in the Q&A and we will address them at the end of the session. All right, I'll take it from here. Thank you Whitney. So I am Nicole, I'm the director of special programs, Academic Affairs at Roger Williams. It is the end of a long day. I'm hoping that we can have a lighthearted fun conversation about technology. If any of you have any access to justice tech access to justice technology jokes I'd be open to them. I'm like a sea captain costume I'd be okay with that, you know, however we want to end this day. Let's do this. Today's panel is focused not just on a to J technology, but rather technology as a bridge or solution to a lot of the a to J problems we heard about today. I think a focus on solutions is a perfect way to end the day. And I'm going to start with Lois. I'm going to start us off and ground the conversation and a historical perspective my first question is for Lois, who is the director of the law and innovation lab at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and the main law foundation Professor of law emerita at the University of Maine School of Law. In 2019 she received a Fulbright senior scholar award where she researched a to J and technology at the University of Melbourne. Lois is an affiliated faculty member of the Harvard Law School access to justice lab co principal investigator of the financial distress research study, and co principal investigator of the Princeton debt lab. She's currently a visiting scholar at the Colorado law and policy center. Lois in a paper you co authored, you stated that quote, recent years have seen an expanding array of both technology and non technology based tools, designed with the purpose of helping people who cannot afford market rate lawyers. Such innovations have recently led to adjustments in funding for legal aid programs, and in advancements and self help and assisted self help tools. These advancements include online client intake systems, self help triage programs, legal diagnostic tools, robot lawyer chat systems, and legal expert system applications. These tools have the potential to be scaled to serve millions more people and make possible a system that provides effectively will help to everyone who needs it when they need it and in a form they can use and quote, you could start with a robot joke, or you could talk a little more about this change in the history of the relationship between access to justice and technology. Well, I'm going to pass on the robot joke. But I will make the observation that we now have in our pockets and purses, a machine that is 32,000 times more powerful than the computer that sent the Apollo rocket to the moon. A recent study revealed that annually there are 55 million people who have experienced 260 million legal problems. Legal services funding has been flat or increased slightly, but not nearly enough. Currently, 92% of civil legal problems of low income individuals did not receive any professional assistance. But out of this rising catastrophe has been born the idea that technology can scale scarce resources and enable serving more people. So the past 15 years, which is about as long as I've been involved in these kind of projects. It's seen exponential growth of self health tools that are designed to guide parties through disputes and others needing help through the labyrinth that's our legal system. Thanks for framing this for us. I mean I think it really what you said really speaks to me as the now is the time. And so the conversation we're having is not some theoretical thing it's a very now thing. Yeah, the my next question is for Zach it's a follow up question from our earlier panel, which I hope set the stage for the work that you've done for anyone who may have missed the earlier panel. He is the principal court management consultant with NCSC and works on national level initiatives to increase access to justice, including working with various court systems to improve the experience of self represented litigants, their process improvement technological innovation and system change at NCSC Zach is a co creator and co host of tiny chats, offering free digestible and creative short form educational videos on topics about a to J. I'm also one of the principal court management consultants on a 2021 report prepared under a state justice Institute grant award to the Rhode Island administrative office of state courts, which assessed current efforts to provide court users with meaningful equal access to the judicial process in the state of Rhode Island. To expand and improve upon current access to justice efforts and SRL services, self represented litigant services or SRL services, your report contained a range of recommendations. One of the recommendations is greatly increase the number of self help resources available by utilizing a multimedia approach and create a prescription pad and or SRL information packet. Um, can you talk a bit about technological solutions you have seen work from other jurisdictions. Sure. I'm sorry I don't have any costumes, totally ready and handy I do have an eight ball magic a fall, and I have just a couple fake gold bars that's as good as I can do on a Friday afternoon. Within reach. Perhaps, perhaps you might start by answering why you have fake gold bars and then you can continue. I know, what do you mean, why wouldn't I. These are, we've got a funding tiny chat coming up we're going to talk about how courts can access several funding streams. And so naturally we had to get some gold bars ready for that. And then the eight ball I don't know exactly what we're going to do with that yet but I have a feeling we'll be asking a questions and then we'll be giving you some answers for that one. Yeah, so the technological landscape, you know there's a there's a varying degrees of specification across the courts that we've worked with and I think that what I'm encouraged by is that that sophistication and stratification exists. You know these things some of them are hard to build some of them are not as hard to build. But the fact that courts are trying to build these things is a good thing. A really true chat bot that uses artificial intelligence some kind that's pretty hard, but including legal information in different ways for users actually isn't that hard. So, you know, some of that is a video which is one way people learn.  So maybe you use a vendor to do that same thing for a better higher production value, but those are more sensitive to change so you can see like just conveying information can happen a number of ways. I'll give you an example of a medium tech one that we did in another jurisdiction. Let's call traffic pass and you can see this on the wine dot county Kansas district course website. There are two courts in wine dot county Kansas that are literally across the street from each other. And depending on which one of the six to eight I forget agencies that can write you a traffic ticket, you would have to go to one court or the other. It's dependent on who wrote you the ticket. And so as you can imagine in court over here, there's a big window for the clerk and there's a sign on that window that says if you got one of these traffic tickets, you're in the wrong place for across the street. The other court is the same sign saying if you got one of those traffic tickets, you're in the wrong place across the street. People don't know the difference between the district court and the municipal court people don't understand why this traffic ticket leads to that none of that really matters. Ultimately to people what they know is they got a ticket and they're trying to deal with it in some way. So the traffic path we built using a platform called after pattern, no code. It's really kind of a guided interview as an online thing. We did it with the court. And what it says, first of all, is who gave you the ticket, which is like a very baseline kind of question. But it shows a picture of the ticket and shows you where to look to see who that agency is. So we've immediately removed some of that guesswork from that question. So people look, they look at the screen, they look at what they got in the hand. Okay, I got one of these tickets. And then you tell us that and we immediately removed from your universe of choices, all the things related to the tickets you don't have. So right there you've already said to people, okay, we know something about you. We know these things don't apply. And then the next question is now we know a little bit about you. What are your goals? What do you want to do? And if what they say is I want to just pay this thing online, then we tell them how to pay it online, they pay it online, they're off and they're that's it. They don't really care about the process for contesting it. They don't really care about how to pay for it. If they said one of those other things, then that's what we tell them. And what I think nice about this is it's not particularly complicated. The problem itself isn't particularly complicated. The navigation of the system is kind of complicated. But more than that, it's reorienting this stuff towards a user perspective to say, who are you and how can we help you? What do you want to do? And for the court staff, that's wonderful thing because now people aren't showing up at the wrong window, getting annoyed, perhaps justifiably frustrated. Why am I here? And the clerk said, why are you here? And then everybody's kind of in a bad mood. That goes away. But then it also takes people to a point of like, we care about what your goals are, and we're going to give you just what you need to know to do what you say you want to do. And I think that reorienting the legal information conveyance, in this case using technology to be that just in time and just what is needed legal information is really, really powerful. Because it put people in a position to own an agency over that process and to give themselves an opportunity to like achieve their goals. And the court in a sort of way saying, and we support you in that effort, that reorient the whole thing into like more of a user experience and the technology, again, it's no code. So you don't need to know how to do computer programming like Quentin does. You could be both like me who just thinks about this stuff a little bit and you can put it together in a way that allows people to think through what their options are. And then you remove options that aren't relevant, which is the other key part to that. A 75 page PDF that has every possible scenario in it in some ways is useful, but in other ways is overwhelming. So for people who are just trying to solve legal problems, you can get some more complicated issues like divorce. If you don't have children, you really don't need to know about all that stuff that comes with parenting plan and custody and vegetation and all that other stuff removed from the equation. That's sort of how we think about a lot of the legal information pieces we do using tech. I don't want to talk too much so I'll stop there but I'm happy to talk more about what we think around the country. Sure, thanks. My next question is for Quentin, Quentin who knows code. He's a practitioner in residence and adjunct professor at Suffolk University Law School's legal innovation and technology lab. His work focuses on closing the access to justice gap with technology, especially interactive tools that help people who cannot afford an attorney. Quentin's signature projects include made the Massachusetts defense for eviction tool and court forms online and international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 Quentin was named a legal rebel by the ABA Journal and honor that we all should aspire to. Public legal innovation and technology or lit lab is an experiential program which allows students to work as part of a consultancy and research and development shop focused on legal tech and data science work. Active areas of research involved but are not limited to the construction of expert systems guided interviews, for example chatbots, an algorithmic codification of tasks that knowledge for example, training computers to replicate human decisions. Lab students develop legal technology and data science solutions for organizational clients, for example legal aid organizations, courts firms and nonprofits, helping them improve efficiency and effectiveness. These services are provided to organizational clients who frequently do not have in house expertise and automating tools, engaging in process improvement and data analytics. Can you please talk a bit about your work in the A to J space at the lit lab, and how you see technology as a potential solution to our A to J problems. Yeah, thanks Nicole. And actually, I have some slides that I think Whitney was going to drive but looks like I have a share screen button maybe I can just share it myself. That's okay. My cat's gonna make a little cameo here to in lieu of a joke. Not acceptable. I love a joke. Whitney, are you able to share the slides. If it's okay, I can and just advance if that's correct. Okay, perfect. That's what I'll do then. Okay, and I'll try not to drone on with the slides too much here. There's a couple fun ones in there if you wait. All right, so thank you Nicole for that introduction and what I do and have been doing for the last five years is really trying to take the law. You know this big amorphous morpheus blob and try to turn it into interactive questionnaires that are really easy for pro say people to use. So the main tool that Nicole mentioned that was a tool I built at greater Boston legal services when I was there as a housing attorney to help people get from. I just got this notice to, I can actually file an answer in court and I'll get reminders to go to court and also be able to fill in all of the follow up paperwork and all the motions that I would need to represent myself in an eviction case. And when I joined Suffolk, we took that same work that I did at GBLS, and we made it apply to all of the things in Massachusetts. As much as we could at least the most important and emergency things because what happened was the same week that I started at Suffolk was the week that the university shut down. The world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And suddenly we had all of these things that people were trying to get access to in the world in Massachusetts particularly through the court that they couldn't anymore because there was no online digital process to do it. So we're like what can we do to make that accessible to everybody. And a short of the time as we can, how can we start building these interactive questionnaires to help people get that access. And not take months and months and months to deliver the tools. So that's the problem that we've been focusing on for the last few years. We were successful with that by a massive outpouring of volunteer energy from around the world. And the way that we're continuing that work and improving it is to really zoom out. We're thinking big about better court forms and better court processes. We're trying to use data. We actually collected 18,000 court forms from 25 different states that were available online and we're trying to get insights out of those to make them better and easier for people to use. Both in terms of making them better court forms more accessible using better language for different people with different reading abilities and to ultimately turn them into some of those interactive tools and as much of an automated help hands on way as we can. So here's an example of one of the things that we've been working on recently, which has zoomed out the big picture. So what you can see here is our first draft of this instrument we've been building to tease out what are the important features of a court form that will affect how easy or hard it is for someone to fill it in. So we're looking at things like the reading grade level. The number of fields, the density of fields on the page, the number of words, the density of the words, how many challenging words that are outside of that kind of shared vocabulary of the most common 5000 6000 words. And then also things like passive use of passive voice use of legal citations that are kind of scrolled off the page. So we want to get it to something like this, which on the right that's kind of a mock up of a score that you can get right now for something like a web page speed loading. But we'd like to get to something like that a score for a form that tells you this form really needs more attention and more work to be easy for a prosaed litigant to use. And then moving back outwards to like how do we scale up that insight to actually make a tool that's easy for someone to get access to what they need from the court we've been thinking about just the very basics of digital access. How can we turn that into an automated tool that people can use. And then I'll touch on a couple of the features, since we're talking about accessibility that are really important to people who have different abilities. So here's the joke. It's an older one but it checks out. I have anyone knows this this exhibit has a show called Pimp My Ride and his catchphrases yo dog. All right, I got one thumbs up it goes over the head of my students now. A little bit too old maybe even as a meme format. So what we did is we took the process of creating one of these interviews, which we call document automation is kind of a catchall term for it. We actually automated that itself as much as we could. So what that means is if you take a form that comes from a court website. You can actually click one button. This I'm feeling lucky button. And it will turn it into a draft automation for you, something that involves a lot of grunt work a lot of boilerplate code. You no longer have to do all of that work by hand. So how long will it take to get from that draft to a real usable form depends on, you know, how much information, how much logic need to add to it, because we can't put in kind of those branching pathways for the automator. But we can avoid them having to redo the things that are just like what otherwise be copying and pasting or looking at a reference and then replicating it again. We can do all of those by hand here. So that's an automated way. Hold on a second. I'm just going to ask. Okay, let me just. So that's pulling up a link of what our index of 15,000 18,000 forms looks like but actually want to go back to the slideshow here. Okay, it's not letting me do that probably because I just have to use my mouse here scroll. Okay. So this is what it looks like if you do go through it instead of clicking that I'm feeling lucky button, step by step, you see you have a lot of options here to get through the building process and is still in a guided way. The building itself is guided. And here's a preview of some of those accessibility features that I mentioned. So one thing that all of the tools that we build have is a really basic feature, this ability to read the screen allowed. We're learning that people who have limited vision often have built into their systems and they know how to use and are really familiar with it. But what we found is that there are there's this group of folks who just aren't great at reading a lot of text on screen. They're not blind, but they may have difficulty just reading large amounts of text so that read allowed features really helpful for them. And one other feature of what we've been building is language access is really at the top of mind for us. So here's a form that's been translated into English and Spanish. I think the most languages any of our tools are translated in is up to five different languages. And we're just providing that as a way to try to make the law more accessible. One of the projects that I'm working right now is kind of cool is we're taking the whole housing sanitary code in Massachusetts. And we're trying to let people interact with it in ways that are more robust for them to protect their own rights, and that is going to be translated itself so we're going to have the first translated version of the sanitary code that exists, and at least four just by the end of this year, hopefully. The next thing that we're doing to really hold ourselves accountable to make sure our tools really are accessible to people with all different kinds of needs is we've built some features into audit them for accessibility. So here you can see kind of a report that's built into the web browser for a single page of one interview, but we're trying to scale that up so we built an automated tool that can run through all of the screens of an interview and make sure that they're all individually accessible, at least using the automated standards. And we're actually also now moving on to doing accessibility tests with real users to people who have different needs like being from the deaf and hard and hard of hearing community. People who have vision limits limitations and people with all different kinds of cognitive abilities so we're incorporating those folks into our usability tests to help make sure that our tools themselves are accountable. And here are a couple of links if you want to learn a little bit more about what we're doing. But Nicole, I'll stop talking and happy to hear any questions from you that that prompted. There are no questions there's just a lot of praise for for the pit my ride slide. I didn't ask for it and yet I got it anyway and I couldn't be happier. My next question is for Lois, as I previously mentioned, you do all the things. You're currently an affiliated faculty member at heart at the Harvard Law School access to justice lab co principal investigator of the financial distress research study co principal investigator of the Princeton University debt collection lab. And was the principal investigator for the apps for justice project. Can you talk a little bit about the work you have done and are doing in your various roles and how you see technology as a potential solution to our access to justice problems. And Whitney if you can please share the slides. If I can share them the way Quinton did that way I have control so I love control. And that was a law professor joke. Okay, next slide. So we recognize that self help materials are the dominant form of legal assistance received by low income individuals and even low to moderate income individuals so next slide. We can also recognize that there is a vast difference between access to materials and deployment of materials. And next slide, when and, and next slide. Next slide. This is what I was trying to avoid. And that research which began back in 2012, we looked at thousands of pages of self help materials and concluded that these self help materials used inaccessible jargon were very text heavy they lack visual imagery. They failed to provide guidance about processes such as how to conduct a negotiation. They failed to set forth what to expect in court. And most importantly they help they failed to help people overcome the emotional feelings they were having shame guilt stress. So we concluded that the state of the art and legal self help must change. And we don't want to just change it, we need rigorous evidence of what sorts of materials produce good results. So we embarked upon the gold standard for studies that are CT randomized control trials and this is the kind of trial that medical devices and pharmaceuticals are tested. It's a little more complex that I'm going to describe here but basically we randomized our group to 50% of them to our reimagined self help materials and 50% were represented by Connecticut legal services. And our objective was to, next slide, produce rigorous evidence regarding where and when to deploy scarce lawyer time, most effectively while designing new interventions that are less expensive than full human legal representation. So we also thought that there's a lot of great work going on in other fields that we can draw from. And so what we have done is reviewed literature and studies in distance education public health behavioral economics experimental psychology, cognitive psychology sociology to just name a few and came up with the following hypothesis individuals and financial distress will have trouble deploying professional legal knowledge as a result of a variety of barriers, cognitive emotional behavior