Access to Justice Series, 1016 COBJ, Vol. 45, No. 10 Pg. 55

AuthorWilliam Hood. Dan Cordova, J.

45 Colo.Law 55

Access to Justice Series

Vol. 45, No. 10 [Page 55]

The Colorado Lawyer

October, 2016

William Hood. Dan Cordova, J.

The Colorado Equal Access Center; Connecting Unrepresented Litigants to Legal Resources through Technology

As part of the Colorado Judicial Department's continuing response to the challenges facing unrepresented civil litigants, Chief Justice Nancy Rice is implementing her vision for the Colorado Equal Access Center (EAC). The EAC will help connect unrepresented Colorado litigants to legal resources through an interactive website. The Judicial Department has contracted with a consortium of Denver-based technology companies to create the EAC website by the end of 2016.

At the outset, the project will focus on three areas in which the judicial branch believes the need for help is the greatest: domestic relations, landlord/tenant, and small claims. Other areas of the law will be added later. An advisory board, assisted by volunteer subject matter specialists, has already started feeding the tech team essential content for an electronic decision tree that will help users evaluate what legal assistance they might need and where they can find it.

By creating the EAC, the Judicial Department hopes to augment the efforts of our self-represented litigant coordinators (or "Sherlocks") and family court facilitators. These legal professionals already make it easier for many Colorado citizens to journey through our court system and tap sources of assistance that might otherwise elude them.

This article briefly examines the civil legal justice gap that inspired the EAC, the anticipated features of the EAC website, and the history of the EAC's development.

The Problem: The "Justice Gap"

Following hearings around the state in 2013, the Colorado Access to Justice Commission (ATJC) observed that there is a significant justice gap in Colorado and around the country: "That gap—the difference between the civil legal needs of low-income people and our system's capacity to meet those needs—remains a considerable barrier to the shared ideal of equality before the law." [1]

To better understand this gap, consider these statistics: In Colorado domestic relations cases over the last three years, roughly three-quarters of litigants were unrepresented.[2] In two-thirds of domestic relations cases, there was no lawyer on either side.[3] In county court civil cases, consisting primarily of collections, evictions, and restraining orders, the pro se rate for responding parties held steady at 98% over the same period of time.[4] Despite the outstanding work of Colorado Legal Services (CLS) throughout the state, the organization is chronically understaffed and must turn away many prospective clients. CLS has 51 lawyers to serve the entire state. That means the ratio of CLS lawyers to income-eligible Coloradans— households with income up to 125% of the federal poverty level—is roughly 1:16,800 (using data from the 2014 Census Bureau regarding Colorado's population). Across the entire population of Colorado, the ratio of lawyers to residents is approximately 1:213.[5]

Of course, many Colorado attorneys take cases pro bono, and Sherlocks and family court facilitators do an excellent job of offering general legal information to the multitudes, despite being prohibited from offering legal advice. But the volume of cases remains staggering: thousands upon thousands of county court civil and domestic relations cases every year involve parties who struggle to navigate a complicated legal system.

These cases in which so many parties proceed without lawyers often have dramatic reverberations not only for the litigants but also for their children and the larger Colorado community. For example, whether pro se litigants get help affects the rate of homelessness and the ability of courts to act in the best interests of children in allocating parental responsibilities.

Colorado lawyers have long recognized the need for greater access to justice, as evidenced by these initiatives:

• In 2003, concern about access to...

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