Statewide Planning Initiative Work Groups

Work Group 5 – Sustaining and Assuring Quality  

 

Work Group 5 - Final Work Group Report

 

 

 

Work Group 5 Issue List

Access to justice must be accompanied by a commitment to the quality of the justice provided.  This commitment to quality must be made by the Courts, those providing assistance (legal aid, private bar and non-lawyers), and administrative agencies.  What do we mean by quality?  How do we ensure, measure and report quality?

Examples of issues to consider include:

- Outcome measures

- Best practices

- Competition in legal services

- Identifying indicia of quality such as timeliness, good customer service, results and client satisfaction

- Measure efficiency of the services provided; identifying indicia of quality such as timeliness, good customer service, results and client satisfaction

- Find ways to measure customer satisfaction – not just surveys – despite barriers created by challenges of poverty, language, etc. Go to community directly over time.

Information/Resources  

Washington State Access to Justice Board Civil Equal Justice Program Performance Standards, October 1999 http://www.wsba.org/atj/publications/perfstandards.htm

Court Management and Evaluation Practices

Review of Rule and Procedure Simplification:  Rule and procedure simplification ultimately benefits the court, the self-represented litigant, and counsel and his or her client.  While such simplification depends ultimately upon broader rule making bodies, each court can review how it handles cases and asses the need for each practice from the ground up.

Broad Training of Courthouse Staff:  Self help programs should not be regarded as an “add-on”, but should be considered as a core service.  Training should be provided to all courthouse staff so that all feel responsible for the effective functioning of the system for those without lawyers.

Development of Interpreter Programs:  Interpreter programs, while expensive, are critical to access to justice.  The absence of such programs, while harmful to all, is particularly debilitating to those who must proceed without counsel.

Litigant Satisfaction Surveys:  Litigant satisfaction surveys are a major tool to re-orient the court around the needs of litigants, since they help change the court culture.  The process is usually as important as the data.

Data Collection and Evaluation:  Leading self-help friendly courts find that ongoing data collection and evaluation are critical to success.  Ideally such a program is supported by a researcher, but even modification of the case management system so that it provides aggregate data about self represented litigant cases is of great value.

Court as Convener for Innovation:  Courts are coming to realize their unique power to act as conveners.  Their legitimacy is without peer in the community, and their neutrality broadly trusted.

Trial Court Performance Standards – http://www.ncsconline.org/D_Research/tcps/Contents.htm

Agenda for Access: The American People and Civil Justice
(Adobe Acrobat format; 61KB)
This work builds on earlier reports on the ABA 's Comprehensive Legal Needs Study. It offers policy conclusions that might be drawn from the legal needs study. The executive summary is provided here.

Legal Needs and Civil Justice - A Survey of Americans
(Adobe Acrobat format; 554KB)
This is the summary findings of the 1994 ABA Comprehensive [Civil] Legal Needs Study. This work presents the major findings of the study.

LSC's Quality Initiative

Excerpt from LSC President Helaine M. Barnett's 2004 Sherman J. Bellwood  Memorial Lecture 

 Equal Justice Magazine Article: A Question of Quality 

 A Comprehensive, Integrated Statewide System for Civil Legal Assistance.  Discussion Draft prepared by the Project for the Future of Equal Justice describing the objectives and capacities of such a system.  Word document.

 

LSC Convenes Summit on Performance Measures: Assessing Quality and Measuring Results

On June 21, 2003 the Legal Services Corporation, together with the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Clinic and the Bellows-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project at Harvard Law School , convened a Summit on Performance Measures: Assessing Quality and Measuring Results. Thirty-two people attended the summit, including program executive directors, national leaders, funders, representatives of the courts and several leaders of legal services in the United Kingdom .

LSC Consultant Colleen Cotter presented the preliminary report of the Outcomes Project for which she was retained by LSC. Several attendees presented papers, including several leaders of legal services in the United Kingdom . The afternoon's discussion was facilitated by Justice John T. Broderick, LSC Board member and newly appointed LSC Board Chair Frank Strickland attended the summit.

The discussion and presentations at the summit will be incorporated into Ms. Cotter's final report and will be considered by LSC as they determine what steps to take next with regard to performance and outcome measures.

Summit Report

Summit Papers can be found through the links below:

Civil Legal Aid in the United States: An Overview of the Program and Developments in 2005 by Alan W. Houseman. Civil legal aid in the United States continues to undergo major change and transformation. Nevertheless, the country has a long way to go to enable low-income persons to access a system of civil legal assistance that will address their legal needs effectively. This paper offers an overview of the U.S. legal aid system and how it compares to that of other countries, and reviews developments in civil legal aid. It also examines the challenges to full representation in all relevant forums and to ensuring statewide coordination and support. 33 pages. 7/1/2005

  ABA Standards for Provision of Civil Legal Aid  

 

The ABA is revising the 1986 Standards for Providers of Civil Legal Services to the Poor. Drafting of proposed revisions is now complete. The proposed revised Standards for Provision of Civil Legal Aid are available as a PDF file HERE (280 pgs; 999K). This compilation is as of 06-02-2006 . This document will be considered by the ABA House of Delegates in August 2006 for adoption as ABA policy.  http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/sclaid/civilstandards.html

PRINCIPLES OF A STATE SYSTEM FOR THE DELIVERY OF CIVIL LEGAL AID and STATE CIVIL LEGAL AID DELIVERY SYSTEM SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL – http://www.abanet.org/leadership/2006/annual/onehundredtwelveb.doc

STATEWIDE EVALUATIONS - SOME THOUGHTS
by John A. Tull, MArch, 2002
This paper starts with a broad premise shared by many in our community about the growing importance of evaluation to effective legal services delivery.  That premise is that good management involves regularly evaluating how effective we are in accomplishing our objectives.  A more rigorous management expectation about self evaluations would be beneficial at all levels of our system.  Individual programs will make better decisions regarding their operation, if those decisions are based on a thoughtful, well grounded appreciation of how effective current efforts to serve clients are.  Innovative initiatives within a program will more quickly be adjusted to better serve clients –or be jettisoned if they don't, if there is informed knowledge about how effectively the initiative is working.  As a national community, we have many questions to resolve regarding new delivery approaches, such as hotlines and web-based self-help, that cry out for, and now are receiving, thoughtful evaluations to help determine their value and effectiveness. 

This paper considers the importance of the evaluation of statewide systems, and assumes that at that level too, regular evaluations would be beneficial.  The framework for thinking about statewide evaluation is that it is an evaluation of the system, not just a single program, even in a state with a single statewide legal services program.  Looking at the system means looking at how all the resources that are available to serve low income clients function together (or not) to respond to clients’ needs.

Click Here for the Complete Paper

   

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