The Judicial Council Information Technology department, in coordination with the Judicial Council Technology Committee and individual trial courts, has developed a number of applications to assist court users. Many of those applications are specifically designed to assist self-represented litigants, with a particular focus on users with limited English proficiency or community members who face difficulty accessing the courts (including those with geographic, economic, and physical barriers to access).
We will highlight and discuss a number of those applications, including Hybrid/Remote Hearings, MyCitations/Online Trial by Declarations, Virtual Customer Service Center Pilot, and California Courts Translator (Voice to Text) Pilot. Discussions will include how projects are prioritized, how the Judicial Council gathers information on the needs of court users, our metrics for success, and how we meet resource challenges (including our current budget climate). Some of the staff working on those specific projects will be brought in, depending on availability, to offer their own “on the ground” experience. The presentation will also give those in attendance an opportunity to ask questions and offer suggestions about how the Judicial Council makes decisions regarding its technology project portfolio.
The Medical Legal Community Partnership (MLCP) model exemplifies the power of when legal aid attorneys train community partners to identify legal issues in a way that ultimately increases referrals to legal services. The presentation would: (1) Explain the MLCP model and how particularly vulnerable populations (the sick, the elderly, monolingual speakers, etc.) have better access to legal aid through MLCP; (2) Explain how MLCP attorneys train physicians, medical social work, case management, and mental health providers to identify legal issues in a way that empowers staff to generate referrals to legal aid; (3) Provide data on how MLCPs better the social determinants of health, which is a unique metric of the benefits of legal aid; and (4) Explain how these training principals can be adopted to train other, non-medical community partners (i.e. domestic violence shelter staff, food pantry staff, etc.) to try to increase legal aid referrals
This session will connect the link between paying summer law students at Legal Services Organizations (LSOs) and increasing racial diversity and equity while also strengthening the law student to LSO pathway. Learn about how California has helped increase diversity among summer law students in legal services organizations through examples of funded programs and through the support of the California Legal Aid Leaders summer law clerk fellowship program.
