The investigation phase began in August 2000, centered around a course taught by Professor Ronald W. Staudt entitled, the Justice Web Collaboratory Interprofessional Research Opportunity (IPRO). This class included 13 law students from Chicago-Kent and 5 graduate design students from the Institute of Design. Under the supervision of Professor Ronald W. Staudt and Edward B. Pedwell and in cooperation with Paula Hannaford and Nicole Mott of the NCSC, teams explored existing pro se assistance programs identifying the processes and issues faced by self-represented litigants. The researchers, in teams, observed the Chicago-Kent Advice Desk and gathered information from litigants and courts in Cook and Lake Counties, Illinois; Delaware; Boulder County, Colorado; and, Ventura County, California.
The IPRO accomplished two main tasks:

Phase One, Task 1: Creation of a New Curriculum to Build a Design Protocol – August, 2000

Paula Hannaford from the NCSC completed the site selection for the project to include: Cook County (IL) Circuit Court, Lake County (IL) Circuit Court, Colorado 20th District Court, Ventura County (CA) Superior Court, and Delaware Family Court. These sites were chosen based on several criteria including: geographic and demographic diversity, variation in local pro se assistance initiatives and variation in types of cases in which litigants appear pro se. Each court has demonstrated a willingness and institutional capacity to implement the redesigned court process model at the conclusion of this project.

In August 2000, the project staff from Chicago-Kent College of Law developed the curriculum for the IPRO class in which 18 graduate students (13 law, 5 design) participated. Professor Staudt, with assistance and contributions from Paula Hannaford and Edward Pedwell, assembled background literature on pro se issues and solutions in order to help the students become familiar with the problem and some of the efforts already underway to improve access to justice by self represented litigants.

Phase One, Task 2: Assessment of the Existing Process – September – December, 2000

(1) Information Gathering – Mapping the Domain

The IPRO students were split into teams of 4 to 5 students. Under the guidance of Ronald W. Staudt and Edward B. Pedwell, each team conducted extensive on-line research to learn as much as possible about existing court procedures and resources available to self-represented litigants in the jurisdictions participating in the study. Within the study sites, research focused on landlord/tenant, small claims, and family law issues.

Before visiting the study sites, each team created a site visit plan that defined the nature and scope of the information that they would collect. All of the teams made extensive plans to interview judges, court administrators, court staff and pro se litigants. Each plan described the major objectives the team expected to accomplish during the site visits.

Accompanied by representatives from the NCSC, Professor Staudt and/or Edward Pedwell, students visited each of the cooperating court systems . The site visits occurred as follows:

(2) Identification of Design Issues – Observations – Design Factors

The key activity of each visit involved ethnographic observation of the “customers” as they interacted with the court system. Court clerks, judges and court facilitators were “shadowed” by student observers. Unrepresented litigants were interviewed before and after court appearances, and asked about their reasons for using the court system and their reactions to current practices and procedures. The teams interviewed and tape-recorded pro se litigants, judges, clerks and court staff to solicit their views about how court processes might be made more accessible for self-represented litigants. As permitted by court personnel, the teams gathered a photo record of the buildings and processes. While on site, each of the teams collected pamphlets, court forms, instructional materials and other information that each court provided, and explored any other resources that each jurisdiction offered. The teams examined hundreds of case files and set up survey procedures to gather case management data, demographic information, and opinions from self-represented litigants at each court observation site.

The information was used to identify the major barriers to justice for self-represented litigants, and to begin formulating “design factors” for the redesign phase of this project, a task that is the first stage of the structured design process described next. The most important purpose of this information accumulation was to establish an ethnographic base upon which to build Phase Two.

The research project entitled "Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants" (Access to Justice)
was developed jointly by Chicago-Kent College of Law, the Institute of Design and the National Center for State Courts.

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