Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants

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The U.S. system of government, admired around the world as a model of democracy, is grounded in the rule of law. In theory, justice is available readily and equally to all. In practice, access to justice is easier for some than for others, and for those unable to afford legal services, justice may be difficult to obtain at all. The American ideal for justice is not unreasonable or unattainable. It can be achieved by systematically removing the unnecessary, simplifying the necessary, and rethinking processes from the standpoints of those who must use them.

Today an increasing flood of people, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, have begun to try to handle their own court cases rather than rely on lawyers. However, modern court systems in the United States are too complex for all but the most sophisticated non-lawyer. Courts, in their efforts to improve access to justice, have inadvertently made the system more complex by adding more procedural layers and rules.

To address these shortcomings, Chicago-Kent College of Law, has joined with the Institute of Design and the National Center for State Courts to bring together the most advanced process design technologies and the power of the Internet to fundamentally reengineer civil court processes from a customer prospective, in which self-represented litigants seek access to judicial services in a research project entitled "Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants: A Consumer-based Approach".