Remote Court Offers Multi-Door Access, but Availability is Spotty

Episode Notes

Transcript

Clarissa Gaff:

I think what we’ve struggled to see is sort of uniform practices put in place that are accessible for all litigants.

Announcer:

Equal access to justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice and An LSC Podcast, we’ll explore ways to expand access to justice and illustrate why it is important to the legal community, business government, and the general public. Talk Justice is sponsored by the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation.

Lee Rawles:

Hello and welcome to Talk Justice. I’m Lee Rawles, assistant managing editor at the A BA Journal and your host for this episode. Today we’re talking about remote court. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many proceedings moved online out of necessity. Now many courts have since done away with virtual proceedings, but advocates say that remote court increases accessibility and fairness, especially for low-income and rural litigants. Joining us today, we have legal aid leaders from Illinois and Florida. We’ll hear about the effect of remote court, not only for litigants, but also for legal aid organizations as well as some of their state’s initiatives to assess and enable remote court access. Our guests are Clarissa Gaff, executive director of Land of Lincoln Legal Aid in Illinois. John Martino, director of Litigation at Community Legal Services, mid Florida, and Leslie Powell-Boudreaux, executive Director of Legal Services of North Florida. So gang, thank you so much for joining us. To set the table, could each of you tell us how the courts in your service area currently approach remote court? I’m just wondering about your experiences before the pandemic compared to what you experienced right at the beginning and then what you’re seeing now. Clarissa, let’s start with you.

Clarissa Gaff:

Yeah, well thank you. The land of Lincoln served 65 counties in Southern and central Illinois. It’s an area about the size of Indiana, and so I can honestly say how our courts are currently dealing with, it depends on the county and the judge, mind you, it is far more prevalent than it was before the Covid Pandemic. So that was one benefit of the pandemic is that it expanded. But the Illinois Supreme Court has granted courts a great deal of discretion to decide whether or not they’re going to allow remote proceedings. It may depend on the subject area, what’s being conducted and things like that. So it really, really depends. Some courts don’t allow it at all and some judges don’t allow it at all either. And then in other instances, it’s fully operational in the courthouse throughout every Courtroom for every proceeding. It really just depends. There are at least probably I would say 15 to 20 counties in our service area that pretty much do not allow remote proceedings. And then in a couple other counties there are a number of judges who have opted out from allowing these.

Lee Rawles:

Well, and John, you practice in mid Florida and I’d love to hear how that differs. Obviously Florida has a much larger population than Illinois. I also think it’s interesting for us to look at how different state governments handle these things. So you’re in Florida. Does what Clarissa is describing also align with what you’re seeing or are you seeing something very different in Florida?

John J. Martino:

So community legal services runs across 12 counties in the middle of Florida, and we have cities like Orlando. We have very densely populated areas like Daytona Beach or the Villages, and we also have a lot of rural areas to the western side of our service area. So I would concur with Clarissa that it really depends because from county to county and judge to judge, it’s really taken on their preferences for what you want to do. Now at the top level, the Florida Supreme Court is certainly pushing initiatives to increase access to the courts. That is something that is an abiding goal of the Supreme Court. It’s in their strategic plan that we increase access to justice. And remote hearings is certainly an aspect of that, but at a county by county, judge by judge basis, the amount of remote court that we’re seeing in the middle of Florida depends largely on the preferences of the circuits and the judges.

Lee Rawles:

Well, Clarissa and John seem to be seeing kind of the same variability. Leslie, does that reflect what you’re experiencing too?

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux:

It absolutely does. So legal services, north Florida covers 16 counties basically in the Florida panhandle and much like John service area, there’s some populated areas, Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City, Dustin, but there’s also a lot of rural communities that people normally have to travel pretty far to. And I think one of the things that was interesting in the pandemic is it was those rural courts that were the last ones to go to remote hearings. And I think there’s some cultural differences in rural counties where they value that face-to-face contact and want to see people in person. I think that was one of the reasons why that was delayed. And I think some of that has continued that they want that face to face and that one of the challenges just to talk about that access to justice piece that John was referencing is that that may be the place where our clients need it the most because getting to those courthouses in rural counties that don’t have public transportation that really have challenges getting to those locations is a barrier to access. And so I think we are seeing shifts and just prior to this podcast, I took a second just to look at some local policies for some of our judges. And they really are widely varied about what, not just whether or not they’ll do it, but what the process is to allow for it. And while the court rules set by the Supreme Court say that it is simply a motion and they have to have an agreement of some sort that is shifting and how it’s applied with each judge is just a little bit different.

Lee Rawles:

Well, I’m curious about the expectations that you’re seeing from litigants. Do people who may have now experienced a lot more leniency with their employment being able to work remotely, do litigants expect to be able to attend court remotely now or is having to attend in person still the baseline assumption you’re seeing, Leslie, I’ll start with you.

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux:

Sure. I think it is something that people are getting used to. So with technology being a little bit more in the forefront, it may just depend on the frequency with which someone has had to appear in court before and they may think that they should be in court because that’s what they’ve always seen. But I will say the courts are doing a pretty good job of educating litigants on what is available. They’re making a lot of information available on their websites about what it means to appear virtually in a court hearing. And so I think they’ve added it to notices of hearing so that people can see it immediately in that notice of hearing that they receive. And with that they get instructions about what they need to do to prepare for a virtual hearing. So I do think people are getting used to it. I do get feedback occasionally that the personal nature of that exchange of that being heard is getting lost a little bit. So I don’t know that all litigants appreciate the virtual nature of it, but it certainly does help with the cost of transportation, the cost of childcare, not having to take that time off work, hopefully being able to just go to one vehicle or to a room somewhere and be able to hear it without having to take time off work. Those are benefits that certainly many people are seeing and are learning to appreciate.

Lee Rawles:

Well, and Clarissa, your group, the land of Lincoln Legal Aid partnered with the First judicial circuit in Illinois on an actual pilot program for remote court appearances. Can you give us a little more information about what this pilot program was and the report that came out in January about some of the findings and the impact that remote court has had on legal aid?

Clarissa Gaff:

Yeah, I’m happy to share about that. So we had planned this project prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic really helped us launch it. So in 2021, we actually entered into a pilot project with the administrative office of Illinois courts as well as the first judicial circuit, which is comprised of nine counties that are furthest south in our service area. Some of these counties, courthouses are more than three hours away from our nearest service office. And I would say there is absolutely no public transportation in this part of the state. Our poverty levels in this area are higher than state averages and the courthouses are just really far apart and compounding matters. There really aren’t a lot of attorneys, they haven’t added any attorneys to the local roles in this area since 2018. So it can be really hard to access an attorney who can help you with your legal problems.

So the administrative office of the courts brought us all together and they helped us with this agreement. They, part of the agreement was updating technology for us and that we added high-speed fiber cable internet to that local regional office that served that area so that we could do Zoom hearings and have better connectivity to the courts. And then the courts, it added to the courts themselves, things like webcams, wiring, internet speakers. We actually had a couple judges who didn’t have computers in their courthouses. So all of this was added as part of the agreement. And then it was a two year pilot and it was intended to allow land of Lincoln to appear remotely to reduce our issues in providing representation so far from our office. If a case landlord is heading three hours away for a five minute status hearing and then driving three hours back, that’s a lot of time wasted in a car when they could really be helping other people.

So it was intended to help us and measure the impact of this particular project. And just to share six months prior to the pandemic in these nine counties, we never appeared remotely in them. And then during the first six months of the pandemic, we actually were able to appear 67 times. So it changed dramatically. And what we found was there was a significant benefit to this particular agreement and pilot project that lasted two years. Over the course of it, we were able to appear 467 times remotely in these nine counties. We didn’t have to travel 18,500 miles over this two year period. That’s what we discovered. That’s how much mileage we saved, which also frankly saved land of Lincoln about $11,000. And if you want to quantify it in an environmental sense, we didn’t put 14,000 pounds of carbon emissions into the environment. So that’s all lovely, but the really big thing is saving 633 hours of driving time, which is huge. What we sort of played out and looked at our numbers is that means we could represent 50 more people fully in an order protection, or alternatively, we could provide strong robust advice to 250 people who are facing eviction, and that may be their only chance at getting an attorney, right, getting advice. We were also in the midst of the eviction crisis, which frankly continues unabated, but that’s probably for another law talk or

Lee Rawles:

Another episode for sure. Yeah,

Clarissa Gaff:

And so it was huge for Leo aid. It was really important and it allowed us to potentially serve more people, save a lot of time, save a lot of money. Now were we able to have every contested hearing via a remote appearance? No, but a lot of routine matters and motion hearings got resolved over a remote appearance rather than in person in the courthouse. So it was huge. And the courts also, I should say as part of the pilot, they would set up a room where a client who came to the courthouse could access Zoom and speak to their attorney ahead of time. Alternatively, they could also come into our office and meet with us and we could all sit and do this hearing together. So it just depended on how the client wanted to do it or they could stay home and do it on their phone or do it however they could possibly access a remote appearance.

Lee Rawles:

Well, I have to imagine, as you said, your attorneys save so much time from being in the car, although perhaps that means less time for being able to listen to podcasts such as this one, the trade-off, does sound worth it for them. What was the feedback you were hearing from your clients? Was there a significant difference in, say, their satisfaction with the legal advice that they’re getting, the counsel? Were you able to find any consensus about that?

Clarissa Gaff:

Well, I think clients appreciated the opportunity to appear remotely because of some of the factors we’ve already discussed, which is that they don’t have necessarily have access to a car. So getting to the courthouse could be really hard, but being able to be on your smartphone in your kitchen and do the hearing is huge. Secondly, finding childcare is not particularly easy. We just talked about a lack of attorneys. There’s also a lack of childcare that’s if you can afford it and if you can access it. So being able to do this and be home with your children and not have to find childcare prior to coming to the courthouse would be huge. I mean, I’ve had clients take their children to court and I’ve also had kids get admonished for their behavior by judges, but their kids, their parents are doing the best they can by bringing ’em to court. So overall, I think clients really appreciated the opportunity. And also as mentioned, not having to leave work or just having to leave work for a 15 minute break to appear before a judge and not really have to interrupt their workday or give up, pay or risk the loss of a job by going to court. It’s huge for them.

Lee Rawles:

So John, you mentioned that some of your area is very rural. I have to imagine your attorneys would experience times not all that dissimilar to what Clarissa is describing. What has been the importance to your organization of remote court and what’s been your experience? This was an Illinois based pilot project that Clarissa just described. What’s happening in your area?

John J. Martino:

So there has certainly been less driving required as a result of the increase in virtual hearings, but I think that it really depends on the type of cases that you’re talking about because across our service area, family law cases, the status conferences with those hearings are often remote. So that certainly reduces drive time for those types of cases. And that is our largest unit. So that’s a lot of our cases. However, there’s still a lot of other types of cases where we are having to appear in person including status hearings. So while there has been more remote appearances, it’s not necessarily completely taken over in our service area. It’s something that it’s nice when we have it, when the clients are able to appear for those types of hearings in those types of ways, but it’s not necessarily something that we count on and we really try to look at it on a case by case basis as to what is the best for the client. And we hope that when a client has a transportation issue, that it’s the type of case that remote appearances are allowed. And then conversely, when it’s a situation where the client may have some limitations with regards to technology that they are able to still go to the courthouse, right? We want to promote a multi door approach into the court system.

Lee Rawles:

Absolutely not everyone has high-speed internet or has attended a Zoom meeting and knows how to do that.

John J. Martino:

And in Florida specifically, I was just looking at the numbers earlier, in 2021, the US Census Bureau rated that we have about 8 million households in the state of Florida and about 74% or roughly three quarters have access to broadband. So that’s about 2 million households that do not. That’s a significant amount of our population that remote appearances is just not going to help them necessarily.

Lee Rawles:

Well, and let’s dig into that a little more. We have this binding by the National Center for State Courts in their 2023 report. They found that people feel that court’s the most fair and accessible when they’re able to choose between remote and in-person. So what are some other why in-person court could be more appropriate in certain cases? John, do you want to take that?

John J. Martino:

Sure. So I’ll say a lot of my background with community legal services was working in our family law unit. And the cases that I enjoyed working on the most were injunction cases for domestic violence and getting those orders of protection for people. And in some ways, during the pandemic, there was a relief with the clients when they found out that they did not have to go to the courthouse, that they did not have to face their abuser directly. But then again, you got to think about it as a litigator as well, and what is going to be the most effective way for your client to put their case forward? What are the complications when you’re entering into evidence of video, when you’re doing it through Zoom? How do you mark an exhibit when you’re not in person? These are all things that we had to overcome during the pandemic.

And while a lot of those challenges have been met, and we figured out ways to handle those types of things to the stay, for some clients it’s more important to be in the courthouse and to have their day in court than any kind of conveniences that they may receive from being remote. And there’s a power to being in a Courtroom with a judge, particularly in domestic violence cases. But in all cases, these people are looking to get these cases resolved. Sometimes it takes years to get their family law case resolved or their civil litigation case resolved. So sometimes people do want to just walk to the courthouse. There are people that may live two blocks away from the courthouse that don’t have access to technology. So they need that optionality. They need to be able to still go to the courthouse in that way and argue their case or have us argue their case.

Lee Rawles:

And Leslie, do you have anything to add to that?

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux:

So I would echo what John said about victims of abuse and what we’ve seen there. And I think the flip side of that, they don’t have to see their abuser, but the challenges in presenting witness testimony and can the judge see the demeanor and the body language and all of those things come to play. But I think there’s another piece of that that relates to confidentiality. So much of what gets testified to in family law cases, dependency cases, juvenile cases, domestic violence, there’s confidential hard information to share, and virtually not everybody knows who’s in the room and who might be listening. And there was a really challenging news story, and I can’t remember where it came from, where they were taking testimony virtually in a criminal case and at some point realized that the witness testifying appeared to be in the same place as the defendant in a criminal case.

And they ended up identifying that sending law enforcement to the house. And lo and behold that they were both in the same house and they noticed her testimony was different, her testimony had changed, and there was this influence that is harder to track in a virtual hearing than it is in an in-person hearing. And so that’s an extreme example, but say for example, the children are in the home, is the victim going to say all the things they might say if the children weren’t around to potentially overhear it? So I think there’s some hard discussions that we as lawyers have to have with our clients about the pros and cons of each of these options and making sure that we’re, as John said, setting them up with the best presentation of the evidence that they have while protecting all of those other aspects of a case at the same time. And we’ve been able to partner with libraries and community centers and some other places, and we also, as Clarissa said, have some courts that have virtual courtrooms. So trying to find other solutions to this that still provide all of those protections, I think have to be a part of that discussion.

Lee Rawles:

So you brought up having these other spaces, maybe a community center or a library available where you can make sure that the person has privacy, but also good internet connection. Clarissa, did the land of Lincoln Legal Aid look into any of those solutions where it’s not the person’s car or home, but also it’s not the courthouse where you can provide these

Clarissa Gaff:

Zoom rooms or whatever you want to call

Lee Rawles:

Them?

Clarissa Gaff:

We did it on a case by case basis. We have a lot of strong community partnerships with different agencies and organizations in our counties and in our communities. And so it may be that a client doesn’t have internet, but they have interacted with the local domestic violence shelter who’s able to set them up with a computer in a room where they can meet with their attorney or where they can actually participate in court. We’ve also worked with libraries, we’ve worked with senior centers is another one where we’ve done it as well. We try to be as innovative as possible and we try to rope in as many of our partners as needed when we can do that. I do want to circle back to what the National Center for Court’s finding was, which is that people feel it’s fair and accessible when they have a choice.

And I think that’s really huge here is having that choice because we do serve a number of people with disabilities while accessing the courthouse is humiliating and impossible. I mean, we have courthouses without elevators, but second floors and people have to ride a chairlift up to the second floor and they are exhausted getting into a vehicle and coming to the courthouse, or maybe they even have to ride two buses if they’re in a place with public transportation to get to that courthouse, then they have to deal with heat walking, getting in or finding a wheelchair ramp or whatever it is. And it’s just grueling, grueling to go to court. So the fact that I can send one of our caseworkers out to a house to have that client hop on Zoom with a laptop and a wifi hotspot so that they can participate fully in their case, that is something we’ve done and we’ve done it for even our clients who are helped by pro bono attorneys.

That’s huge. And that does mean the court has this accessible, one thing I think studies have shown is that when you have these options, people are less likely to default in their cases. And I do think some of our clients default because the idea of going to court is just overwhelming because of the nature of their physical disabilities. Not to mention there are a whole host of how people feel about courthouses in general. There are a whole number of things that go into that. What have their previous experiences been? Do they have a warrant out, right? There’s all sorts of reasons people are worried about participating in their cases, and remote appearances can circumvent some of those fears. So yeah, I think choice is huge and I hope more courts adopt. I think John put it aptly as a multi door approach. I think of it as a hybrid approach, but a multi door approach to the courthouse. That’s certainly what we in legal aid try to do. We try to offer as many options as possible to access us. And I know our state Supreme Courts across the country are looking to make the courts as accessible as possible. So to the extent they can provide these multiple doors for anyone is great.

Lee Rawles:

And speaking of state, Supreme Courts, the Florida Supreme Court last year approved a pilot program for online dispute resolution for small claims court. So Leslie or John, do you have experience working with these kinds of online dispute resolution platforms? What would that be like for a litigant? I’ll start with you, Leslie.

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux:

So the pilot programs are actually outside of our service area, so we haven’t been working on that. I do think John May have a little bit more information because at least one of those counties is in his service area, but they still are relatively new as far as I know,

Lee Rawles:

John.

John J. Martino:

Yeah, there has not been much work done with those new platforms. I think there may be, as Leslie said, a county that is piloting that program. However, when I spoke with my consumer unit earlier, they haven’t experienced working with those platforms. However, I will say that across other areas of the firm, things like mediation, those are now routinely being held remotely, especially in family law and different areas like that. So while we’re not doing it necessarily with the small claims cases yet it has been going on with the other areas of the firm.

Lee Rawles:

Well then it sounds like we’ll need to keep apprised of what that pilot program finds out. We’ve heard about the opinions and experiences of litigants and a little bit about how lawyers have been experiencing this remote court, but I’d love to ask you guys what you’ve heard from judges as the head of Courtroom management. You mentioned that judges can be pretty individual about how they want to interact with remote court, whether they want to participate at all or whether they’re enthusiastic boosters, and of course they’re going to be individual preferences. But have you seen a trend perhaps with more judges being more open to this since the pandemic? I’ll start with you, John.

John J. Martino:

So there are certainly more judges doing remote hearings than there were prior to the pandemic. The hesitancy I think some judges have is these are individuals who’ve worked their whole lives to get to their positions and they want to be in the Courtroom and want to manage their caseload in the Courtroom. That’s not everybody, obviously, but that is important to them. And I think they also have concerns about when people are appearing remotely, whether or not those litigants are taking it as seriously as they would be if they were in the Courtroom, right? We’ve heard the stories of people maybe not dressing like they would in a Courtroom or being in a vehicle when they shouldn’t be in a vehicle or just other signs that they may not be taking it as seriously as the judge would obviously want them to be taking it. So in those kinds of situations, judges have expressed frustration. But I think it’s incumbent on us as legal aid organizations to make sure that both our clients and pro se litigants are aware that when they’re going to remote court that it’s court, they need to treat it like they’re going to the courthouse, they need to dress like they’re going to the courthouse and they need to make sure they’re free of distractions.

Lee Rawles:

Leslie, how about you? What have you been hearing from judges that you’ve talked to about remote court?

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux:

Sure. I had the opportunity back in 2022 to serve on a work group that was tasked specifically with providing educational materials for litigants appearing remotely. And there were several judges who were on that work group, and it was a very interesting discussion, spent a lot of time talking about wardrobe attire, what to wear, which is a very interesting discussion to have with judges, I would say. And I remember one judge speaking up because somebody was talking about they should get professional attire and the materials actually include something about how to go to a secondhand store and buy professional professional attire. But one judge in particular said, I don’t care what they’re wearing. If they work on a construction site, if they’re a plumber, if this is what they do, then they should wear what they wear to work. That’s what is meaningful to me that they make it to the Courtroom.

And I thought that was a very fresh attitude and it applied to her in her own Courtroom as much as it did virtual hearings. And I think that that is one of the push pulls here in this discussion is how to reflect respect on the court in a virtual setting if you can’t do it with how you’re dressing. I’ve seen courtrooms where people appearing virtually where they have their whole pantry or closet open behind them, and there’s a lot of information that people can learn from what they see in the background. And so those judges see this too. And I think it feels like someone isn’t really prepared if it doesn’t look clean behind them. But the reality of most of our clients is they’re probably lucky that they can take the time to appear more or less clean up or set up a background or any of these other things that those of us who are appearing virtually always seem to have time to do.

So I think there are some challenges. I will say, I think one of the things judges like about remote hearings is that they also can be remote. So while John, you mentioned that some judges like to be in the Courtroom, there are also judges who like the fact that they can take court from their home, their home office from if they’re at a conference, they can still make sure that they can make appearances in court and hearings that are necessary. So I think it gives them a flexibility that they didn’t previously have that a summer starting to enjoy more and more. And I do think Clarissa talked about this a minute ago, the increased attendance, people show up more. It allows justice to move forward. There’s less requests for continuances. Some of these things that sort of were wrenches in the judicial process are being removed as people become more and more comfortable with the digital aspect of court hearings.

Lee Rawles:

Clarissa, does this square with what you heard from the Illinois judges who participated in that pilot program.

Clarissa Gaff:

I would agree. I will say I regret to inform you, but there’s been some backsliding in those counties since the pilot program. No, and I think yes, yes. So I’ll share a number of the reasons for the backsliding that I think maybe are uniform across our state. One is just that I think judges still struggle to manage hybrid courtrooms. They got some experience, some of it might not have been good between litigants being in the Courtroom and some of the litigants being on Zoom. That is hard to manage. That’s hard for all of us. I mean, I don’t love my meetings when I’m having people in two different, so I think they probably need more help. Our HighSpeed internet isn’t the greatest in southern Illinois. President Biden’s IRA has improved high-speed internet in rural areas in a big way, but it hasn’t reached everywhere. And so we do have internet fails and we have technology fails, and that can be frustrating for the parties.

It can delay justice, and I think there’s some concern about that. Additionally, these are rural courthouses and judges like to see people, they like to see people come in and they like to see people come in and talk settlement, which is less likely to be done on Zoom unless you fully know how to manage breakout rooms and things like that. So in the administration of justice, they like to bring people to the courthouse so that they can move along. And then finally, and we’ve heard a little bit of some protectionist talk, I guess I would say from some of our local judges, which is I don’t want the Chicago attorneys down here taking all the business. Those are private attorneys. I’m happy to have attorneys in this area. I’m happy to have a greater pool of pro bono attorneys to tap, but it is a concern. So I think there are advantages that they very much recognize, but I think there are also things that frustrate them or concern them, some of which have been mentioned here too, about assessing the credibility of witnesses. It’s a big one that we hear.

Lee Rawles:

So I’m going to ask the three of you with the benefit of hindsight, Clarissa, your pilot program. You said you started talking about it before covid happened. So this wasn’t necessarily driven by this kind of emergency situation, but in hindsight, a lot of the remote court options that were created were created in haste because as we all remember for a little while, things weren’t getting heard at all, and the backlog was becoming very frightening. We had to start hearing more proceedings with the benefit of hindsight. Is there anything that you think we should going forward, try and do differently when it comes to remote court as it’s becoming more of a permanent option? And Clarissa, let’s start with you.

Clarissa Gaff:

I think one thing we’ve learned is how important it is to have systems and structures and rules in place as we establish these. I mean, at the beginning it was brand new, and for all of us, it was very covid driven. And so it was a bit of the wild west in terms of how it operated and what was happening on this day might not be how it was conducted the next day. And so I think what we’ve struggled to see is sort of uniform practices put in place that are accessible for all litigants. And I would say across, I’m on a remote access committee subcommittee on our state bar association. And that’s actually one of the complaints of attorneys is that it varies from judge to judge, from counties to county, we have zoom links that are broken on websites. We have to call the clerk, we have to call the judge.

We have to do this. And it’s much easier for an attorney to call the clerk and the judge than it is for a self-represented litigant. For people who really need justice, they dunno who to call. All they know is the Zoom link isn’t working and they’re not getting into places. I also think judges or courthouse staff would all be if they could receive additional training about how to manage a docket. Maybe you take the agreed orders first and you let everyone know that and you stagger your docket. There are certain things that could be implemented that could make it more successful. There are lessons learned, I think, from the years that we’ve been doing this. And I think what John emphasized with the multi door approach is something I’d love to see more and more courts adopt. It was hard and fast, right? In some of these places, only remote at the beginning of the pandemic. But we know that there are, you just mentioned fairness and accessibility is a big thing if people have a choice. And so giving people that choice and setting it up so everyone can access it that way, I think would be huge. I think those are some of the big takeaways from what we’ve learned and how I think we could do this a little bit differently to be more successful.

Lee Rawles:

And Leslie, any hindsight lessons from you?

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux:

Yeah, I would echo what Clarissa said. I think that there were some hard lessons learned about who to call when things didn’t work. I think one of the things that’s gotten better over time is scheduling virtual hearings. I think what we heard a good bit of early on was that people were still scheduled on dockets of 20 cases, and they would be on hold using their data on a Zoom call waiting for their case to get called. And maybe they’d get dropped. Maybe they would run out of data on their own phones, something would happen and then they couldn’t get back through. And so I think that the courts have gotten better at scheduling and scheduling limited hearings within a shorter period of time and making sure that those things are handled. And I think the other piece that we’ve talked about, body language and witness credibility, but one of the challenges in any Zoom call is how to know when to talk and not speaking over people because we can’t see everybody and we can’t see who’s looking at us.

And we can’t always see those visual cues about who has something to say. And making sure for a judge to have a little bit more patience to make sure that everything’s been covered, that nobody else has anything to add. I think that’s been something that people have gotten better at collectively. And the third thing that comes to mind is using all the tools that Zoom and teams and others have to provide us that if an attorney and a client need to speak confidentially and everyone’s virtual, use the breakout rooms, make sure that there’s a space for people to go so that they can have those conversations that they would’ve normally had in the corner of the Courtroom in a break in the testimony. So those kinds of tools and really making sure that they’re being used, I think that’s gotten better. And I think that training that got us here would’ve better served a lot of folks being heard in those early days of the pandemic.

Lee Rawles:

And John, close us out. What would be your hindsight lesson?

John J. Martino:

I think it’s just responding to the needs of the community and listening to them celebrate our successes when we have increased access and have gotten wins with the programs, but listen and respond, people are having issues with technology. When our community, including a lot of our rural communities, we don’t have access to broadband. We need to be prepared to address those types of issues with the general community. And we also need to make sure that as we push for these types of programs, that we really make sure that we pair it with education about access to the courts, like the work that Leslie’s done, and just more generally that they have an understanding when they’re going into a particular hearing, what that hearing is right. There’s been plenty of family law status conferences that I’ve been part of where the person gets on that call and just starts arguing their case, and the judge does not necessarily want to hear that. So I think that’s just, we all believe in access to justice and we all believe in education, and I think we just need to continue those efforts as we take more advantage of the technologies that we have available to us.

Lee Rawles:

Well, thank you so much to Clarissa Gaff, John Martino, Leslie Powell Boudreaux for appearing with us, joining us, and sharing their experience in wisdom. And thank you to our listeners of this episode of Talk Justice. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast listening service so you don’t miss an episode.

Announcer:

Guest speakers views, thoughts and opinions are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the legal services corporation’s views, thoughts, or opinions. The information and guidance discussed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice. You should not make decision based on this podcast content without seeking legal or other professional advice.

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