A new initiative looks to makes courts more accessible to the public

The Illinois courts system is partnering with local public libraries throughout the state to make it easier for people to navigate the legal system.

State residents without representation can visit one of 18 libraries with so-called Court Access Library Centers to use dedicated Chromebooks and other technology to make court appearances remotely, obtain legal information and resources, and access and file court documents online.

“We want to change the way we think about courts and the way the public experiences courts,” said Alison Spanner, director of the Access to Justice Division at the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts. “We want the courts to be a place where people feel that they can come to resolve legal issues that they have. And one way to do that is to take the courts out of the one building … and take a portion of that to the community through the libraries and trained librarians.”

The effort is part of a yearlong pilot project that is seeking to make Illinois courts more accessible and equitable by updating its systems and practices. 

Illinois is far from the only state looking to reform and modernize its court system, according to Danielle Hirsch, managing director of the Court Consulting Division at the National Center for State Courts. She said several places have seen success with programs like Illinois’. For instance, the Louisiana State Bar Association partners with libraries in rural “legal deserts”—areas with few lawyers—to provide help, and it also offers the Justice Bus, a traveling resource. Washington, D.C., and New Mexico courts offer remote hearing sites for people who can’t get to courthouses.

“The pandemic was a catalyst for a lot of improvement change and technology,” Hirsch said. “The use of remote and hybrid hearings have enabled people to participate from public libraries or their homes in a way that has shown in really promising practices in some jurisdictions—a marked decline in default because people are engaging in court [as] it is more accessible to them.”

About 30 million people in the U.S. navigate court cases at the state and local levels without lawyers, said Darcy White, a senior officer at the Pew Charitable Trust’s Courts & Communities project.

“In the past two decades in particular we’re seeing a massive increase in the number of people who are navigating courts without lawyers, and the courts have not kept up,” White said. “They don’t really think about how they engage with the communities that they serve and make sure that people can access them.”

Last year, Pew published a framework for making civil courts more open, effective and equitable. A pillar of that is equity, which technology has a role in supporting, White said. 

“What courts have done is look at how they can increase access to services, not just people who show up and participate in their case, but also to … connect litigants to resources,” White said. 

A recent survey funded by Pew and conducted by researchers at Indiana University compared people who attended court in person and online with representation and without. “We found that the majority of unrepresented litigants who showed up virtually actually experienced more sense of procedural justice,” White said. “They felt that they received a fair outcome. They felt like they were heard. They felt more comfortable navigating the case.”

In Illinois, the libraries participating in the pilot were selected based on location, number of litigants without lawyers, transportation limitations to local courthouses, broadband internet access constraints and interest from libraries. 

Each library sets the parameters for deploying the resources depending on their patron volume, staffing bandwidth and other factors, Roya Samarghandi, associate director of advocacy, innovation and training at The Chicago Bar Foundation, wrote in an email to Route Fifty. 

Each Chromebook is preloaded with resources, such as bookmarks for the court forms, the e-filing portal, local circuit clerk websites, and other resources. 

“We’ve also deployed a naming convention for things like Zoom so that if someone is using the Court Access Library Center for something like participating in a remote hearing, the judges will recognize that they are logging in from a public library and prioritize those cases accordingly,” Samarghandi said.

“E-filing is required here in Illinois,” Spanner said, and that’s a really big barrier to people who don’t have technology skills or don’t have an attorney to help them do it.”

Librarians at participating locations have received training on topics such as the difference between legal information and legal advice. Additionally, some librarians will be trained as certified court library navigators to offer more customized legal information on specific types of cases, including divorce and child custody; domestic violence; wills, trusts and estates; housing; and consumer debt.

“The goal is to prove the concept and to see if we are able to get legal information into the hands of more court patrons in this way and then go from there in terms of whether this becomes a permanent program rolled out to more libraries,” Spanner said.

In general, the number of courts open to taking a more modern approach has increased in recent years, Hirsch said. 

“There’s a lot of opportunity for improvement, and technology is one potential solution. Community partnerships is another. So I think the Illinois example is particularly useful for both of those things,” she said. “Not only is it enabling people to get access to trusted court information and to be able to participate in hearings remotely, but also … it’s being done in a trusted community space like the public library.”

Editor's note: The story was updated to correct who authored the survey.