Author: Lauren Curtis

Judicial Innovation Fellowship Program

The Judicial Innovation Fellowship (JIF) is an initiative incubated at the Justice Lab at Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy.  The JIF is a year-long fellowship for technologists, designers, and user testers to transform justice across state, local, territorial, and tribal courts. It is an exciting new opportunity for technologists, product people, and designers to use their talents for justice. Partnering with state, local, territorial, and tribal courts, fellows will have the opportunity to work inside courts to improve how people access justice. Courts gain a unique opportunity to improve operations and equity by receiving a Judicial Innovation Fellow. 

The Hamilton County General Sessions Court Judicial Innovation Fellowship and Kansas Judicial Branch Judicial Innovation Fellowship SRL e-filing Initiative projects are the featured SJI Grantee Spotlight for March 2024.

In February, the Judicial Innovation Fellowship presented at the Legal Services Corporation’s Innovations in Technology Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was an opportunity for forward thinking justice advocates to learn about the program and how JIF Fellows improve court technology and culture.

For example, Kat Albrecht, who works with the Hamilton County General Sessions Court in Tennessee, spoke about how shadowing different court staff helped her uncover persistent issues in the court’s data system. In an early discovery, she learned that criminal dockets printed in a hard-to-read font size, which caused headaches for clerks, judges, and litigants. Kat’s discovery has been relayed to other departments in county government, who are looking at potential long-term solutions to improve data operations within the criminal justice system.

On panel, they also were joined by Verenice Ramirez and her court partner, Jonathan Mark of the Utah State Courts’ Self-Help Center. Jonathan explained that Verenice, who is a designer, provides an otherwise missing point of view at the court. Having her on staff helped his team adopt project management software and new processes, like using Kanban boards to track project progress. This is something the department had wanted to do for some time, and having Verenice in the office lowered the learning curve, making adoption attainable. Similarly, they heard from Emily Lippolis that her work with the Kansas Courts has helped teach court partners about website design, which assists them in making more informed decisions when developing online portals for court patrons.

“Our fellows are not only bringing much needed design and data expertise to courts, they are
winning over the hearts and minds of our court partners, which is a key element for the
sustainability of their particular projects and for the success of JIF in the long term.”

Tanina Rostain, Georgetown Law Professor and JIF Co-Founder and Faculty Director

In all three instances, the fellows demonstrated that their impact extends beyond their individual projects to how their partner courts operate.

With information flowing in both directions during the conference, the fellows were also able to connect with fellow travelers from other states and learn more about the access to justice gap and justice technology. Collectively, the panel and the trip were a great success.

Now back in their respective courts, the fellows are starting the second half of their fellowship. In the coming months, they will synthesize recommendations for feedback and refinement.

National Youth Defense System Standards

The Gault Center has just released their newest resource, The National Youth Defense System Standards. The System Standards provide a metric to assess a state’s compliance with constitutional mandates that safeguard the rights of young people in the juvenile legal system, with a particular focus on the right to counsel. The System Standards call on states to invest in well-resourced youth defense delivery systems to comply with their constitutional obligations to provide every single youth facing liberty deprivations with a qualified and zealous attorney. For more information about state responsibilities, please take a look at Cause of Action: Fulfilling the Promises of Gault.  

Establishing robust youth defense systems ensures that youth defenders have the right resources to fulfill the constitutional promise of counsel and in so doing, fight for a transformed system under a collective vision of freeing all youth from systemic injustices. 

Gavel to Gavel: Tracking State-by-State Legislative Activity

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) is pleased to announce new Gavel to Gavel resource, which tracks state-by-state legislative activity with potential impact on state courts. In 2024, they are focusing primarily on monitoring proposed legislation related to judicial selection and to cyber and physical security of state courts. An “other” category collects other notable proposed legislation beyond these two focus categories. To read the full article and to access, please visit: Gavel to Gavel | NCSC.

New Summits Aim to Strengthen Cybersecurity for State Courts

Funded by State Justice Institute, the National Center for State Courts, in partnership with the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee and the Center for Internet Security/Multistate Information Sharing and Analysis Center are launching the summits across the country, with the first summit expected later this year. There will be five regional hybrid summits where court leaders will gain a deeper understanding of cybersecurity and technical disaster recovery resources and tools. The purpose of the summits is to prepare state courts to better prevent, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity events. 

The project was recently highlighted in a Government Technology Magazine article: https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/new-summits-aim-to-strengthen-cybersecurity-for-u-s-courts

Upcoming Symposium! The National Interdisciplinary Cannabis Symposium

#UpcomingSymposium Funded by State Justice Institute, the National Interdisciplinary Cannabis Symposium will be held September 27th-29th, 2024, in New York, NY.

For more details and pre-registration information, please visit: https://www.nationalinterdisciplinarycannabissymposium.com/

SJI Funding Toolkit: New Weekly Guide to Federal Grant Programs

NEW–Access the weekly guide to Federal Grant Programs in one concise document, organized by topic area, and that highlights key information to help jurisdictions make decisions about whether to pursue these open #funding opportunities here: https://fundingtoolkit.sji.gov/…/SJI_New-Funding…

The SJI Funding Toolkit is designed to support local courts, state courts, and their justice system partners as they pursue federal and philanthropic funding opportunities. This toolkit includes resources that encompass the entire grant seeking, writing and management process, such as planning checklists, sample documents, frequently asked questions and fact sheets. Technical assistance is also available to courts to provide support and feedback during the grant writing and development process. Whether you are new to the grant process, have attempted unsuccessfully to write grants in the past, want to know about new funding opportunities, or are honing your grant skills, this toolkit is for you! #FTK

SJI Funding Toolkit: https://fundingtoolkit.sji.gov/

Virtual Continuity in the Courts Symposium

When? Tuesday, March 5th, 2024, from 11:00AM – 4:30PM EST.

An opportunity to connect with other Judicial Branch professionals from across the country involved in continuity planning for our Courts coordinated by your continuity peers working in our country’s judiciaries.

Register here: Continuity in the Courts Symposium – Registration (office.com)

Advancing Pretrial Justice Initiative

Pretrial policies have undergone significant change and advancement over the last decade. In 2013, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) endorsed the COSCA Policy Paper on Evidence-Based Pretrial Release. CCJ and COSCA also hosted five Pretrial Regional Summits between May 2016 and November 2018 to facilitate the planning of pretrial policy changes, particularly those around pretrial release. In response, and with support from the State Justice Institute (SJI), the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) launched the Advancing Pretrial Justice Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to develop resources for court leaders and to provide technical assistance to courts in implementing pretrial policy and practice improvements.

Through this initiative, NCSC has provided technical assistance to courts in the form of trainings, customized guides and checklists, summaries of the literature on specific topics, connections to pretrial experts, and other forms of assistance. These engagements have focused on topics like pretrial assessment for release planning, electronic monitoring, pretrial staff safety and wellness, court date notifications, establishing pretrial services programs, and performance monitoring.

NCSC also developed the Pretrial Justice Center for Courts (PJCC), an online resource for judicial leaders and practitioners to explore a variety of pretrial justice topics. The PJCC is dedicated to helping courts plan for and develop their pretrial systems with practical resources. In addition to being a repository of information on the latest research, the website contains examples of pretrial reform efforts initiated across the country, short briefs outlining key pretrial justice topics, and tools for jurisdictions looking to implement new, evidence-based pretrial policies. For example, users can download a pretrial justice planning guide and tool to estimate the costs of implementing pretrial services to prepare for policy and practice changes in their jurisdiction.

The PJCC was recently updated with new resources and to improve the user interface. A pretrial justice reform activities data visualization was added to allow users to quickly identify – by topic area, year, and state – examples of legislative changes initiated or enacted between 2018 and 2022. By March of this year, the website will be updated with additional resources, including the results of a 2022 – 2023 survey on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pretrial policy implementation. Tell us what additional resources would be helpful to advance pretrial justice in your court.

Upcoming Webinar! Landmark SCOTUS Decisions: The Impact of the 21-376 Haaland v. Brackeen SCOTUS decision on Native American Families Webinar

Upcoming #Webinar! Landmark SCOTUS Decisions: The Impact of the 21-376 Haaland v. Brackeen SCOTUS decision on Native American Families Webinar

When? Thursday, February 22nd, 2024, at 3:00PM EST.

This NACM – National Association for Court Management presentation will provide a brief historical context of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the points considered in Haaland v. Brackeen, and a summary of the decision. Implications of the decision and actions going forward will be discussed. The presenter will then examine why ICWA was cited as the gold standard in child welfare in amici briefs and share a research-based rationale for why cultural connections are important for dependent American Indian and Alaska Native children, and indeed, for all children. The presenter will explore how courts can support cultural connections by raising key questions and monitoring active efforts under ICWA. 

Register here: Webinar Registration – Zoom

Innovative New Project Launches to Increase Access to Justice for the Overlooked Middle Class

IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, and The Chicago Bar Foundation (CBF) are excited to partner on this critically urgent project. An important addition to the national access to justice landscape, the Above the Line Network (ATLN) has just launched to tackle the daunting challenges that middle-class Americans face when seeking legal help that doesn’t break the bank. While most organized access to justice efforts rightly focus on low-income and poor people who are especially vulnerable, we can never achieve our nation’s ideal of equal justice for all when middle-class people—who make up more than 50% of the nation’s population— and small businesses struggle to find quality, affordable legal services. They are “above the line” of income eligibility for the free legal aid reserved for the poorest Americans, but they also struggle to find quality and affordable legal services in the current legal market.

The project advances the CBF’s work in helping legal consumers in the middle class connect with affordable and accessible quality legal services—including through its legal incubator program, the Justice Entrepreneurs Project—and the work of IAALS in helping the legal profession evolve to put client and consumer needs first and enable people of all socioeconomic backgrounds to find the legal help they need.

With a specific focus on the legal needs of the vastly overlooked middle class, ATLN is a new, organized network of individuals and organizations across the country and in Canada that are committed to improving access for the middle-market—a collaborative and supportive community where ideas, resources, and best practices can be shared, further developed, and scaled to reach more people who need affordable legal services.

“With the majority of Americans being left behind, a more concerted national effort is needed to address this distinct access gap, and ATLN aims to do just that,” said Jessica Bednarz, IAALS Director of Legal Services and the Profession. “To do so, we don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. Most of the pieces are there, and what we’re doing is bringing them together, thoughtfully and carefully, and ensuring that it rolls in the right direction—faster, more effectively, and finally getting the middle class where they need to go.”

ATLN intends to pull the many pieces together as a full ecosystem of middle-class legal providers and models for serving these clients. While there are some promising programs and models tackling this problem around the United States, Canada, and beyond, there is not a coordinated effort among them. ATLN will change that, uniting these existing efforts together—from incubators, socially conscious private law firms, nonprofit law firms, legal aid programs, and other organizations—to help them grow, thrive, and replicate, and foster advocacy for the middle class in the larger access to justice circles.

Visit the Above the Line Network project page here: Above the Line Network | IAALS (du.edu)