New Program to Help Pro Se Litigants and Thank You
Thank you to our Supporters
On behalf of Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, I want to thank those of you who supported our end of year matching opportunity. To match the $40,000 offered by our anonymous donor, we raised more than $90,000 for an end of year campaign total of over $130,000. This will allow us to continue our systemic reform partnership aimed at fair, effective, and efficient courts and to advance the rule of law through systemic reform efforts.
Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers work collaboratively to seek a fairer, and more effective and efficient justice system. We operate through paid staff and the extensive pro bono efforts of our program advisory committees and the pro bono project work of lawyers, researchers, management consultants, accountants, paralegals, and students who work together to identify injustice, research how it is perpetuated, develop proposed remedies, and advocate for their implementation. We have joint program committees in the areas of criminal justice, access to justice, family law, immigration court reform, federal court reform, and civil liberties.
Donors to Chicago Appleseed support this collaborative effort aimed at systemic reform. Members of the Council are lawyers and paralegals who are part of the Council/Chicago Appleseed partnership for systemic reform.
It is our view that lawyers should be doing two kinds of pro bono work each year — individual representation and applying their skills toward systemic reform. We want our supporters to help fund our staff, but we also want you to participate in our work. Please consider looking at the Pro Bono Opportunities portion of our website or contact me at caffj@chicagoappleseed.org.
Also, please consider looking at the Annual Report of Chicago Appleseed and the Annual Report of the Chicago Council of Lawyers.
Again, thank you for your generosity. We cannot do our work without you.
With gratitude,
Malcolm Rich
Executive Director
Letter: New Program Helps Pro Se Litigants in the Domestic Relations Division
On December 24, the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin ran a letter from Staff Attorney and Program Manager Elizabeth Monkus describing the launch of a new court-based assistance program for pro se litigants in the consolidated Domestic Relations Division at the Daley Center. Elizabeth wrote the letter on behalf of the Family Law Partnership Program Committee of Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers.
December 24, 2018
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
Presiding Judge Grace G. Dickler, in conjunction with the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, has launched the Early Resolution Program in the Daley Center. The program was developed with input from Judge Dickler’s family law committee, of which Chicago Appleseed is a member.
Each year, over 30,000 new cases are filed in the Domestic Relations Division for divorce, child support, paternity determination or other matters related to parents and children after divorce. Many of the couples and parents in this case are unable to afford an attorney and will navigate their cases unaided.
Chicago Appleseed is pleased to have participated in the planning and launching of this innovative program.
The inability to hire an attorney represents a significant barrier to justice in our courts. According to the Legal Services Corp.’s 2017 Justice Gap report, 71 percent of low-income households experienced at least one civil legal problem in the last year, including the kind handed in domestic relations courts. The report also found 86 percent of those cases receive inadequate or no legal help.
Research shows time and again that parties without legal help fare worse in civil proceedings than people with attorneys, even when facing similar issues. Studies also show that a high volume of pro se cases contributes to court delays from overcrowded dockets.
The court’s commitment to reducing the strain on courtrooms from pro se litigation includes a commitment to better serve people who cannot afford attorneys.
Both consolidation of the Domestic Relations Division in 2017 and the expansion of the hearing officer program in Maywood and Markham have helped create an easier-to-navigate court and shortened return dates across the division.
In October, the court instituted an additional program at the Daley Center which places litigants into four pathways: One which sends pro se cases to hearing officers for early resolution; one which sends them to hearing officers for prove-up readiness help; one which sends pro se cases into the Resolution Assistance Program where pro bono attorneys work to resolve their cases; and a fourth where more complex cases – cases with attorney representation and cases where domestic violence is an issue – will remain with judges in the courtroom.
The program started with the hearing officer early resolution program with the volunteer attorney resolution assistance program to be phased in over the next several months.
Cases reviewed by a hearing officer are selected from pro se filings where service has been issued. Court staff send information about the program to the parties along with a time and date to come to court for case assessment. This date is within three to four weeks of filing, which is considerably sooner than the six-month date from filing often assigned by the court clerk’s office. It runs two days a week.
Many of the cases which have been assigned to a hearing officer were resolved at the hearing the first day.
In essence, the Early Resolution Program is functioning like a one-day divorce clinic with unrepresented parties coming in for case evaluation and leaving with completed paperwork to have an agreed divorce entered by the court.
Cases which cannot be immediately resolved with the hearing officer will either receive a future date with the hearing officer for resolution or be returned to the courtroom’s regular calendar. All cases where a domestic violence issue is raised are returned to the regular calendar.
Over the early months of 2019, the pro bono attorney Resolution Assistance Program pathway will be added to the system with some portion of cases going to the attorneys for resolution. Court staff are monitoring the cases coming through the system currently to assess what sort of cases might be appropriate for the program and to gauge how many cases the attorneys can reasonably handle.
At Chicago Appleseed, we have long supported a more expansive role for the hearing officers in the Domestic Relations Division. They are a tremendous resource to relieve crowded dockets and offer additional resolution services to people without legal representation. The new program is off to a strong start, and we look forward to watching it grow.