Legal Self-Help

The Setting: The Financial Distress Research Project is a partnership among multiple branches of government, academia (students and professors), multiple non-profit service providers, and the private sector. The RCT investigates the effectiveness of attorney representation, financial counseling, and self-help materials on financial wellbeing.

The Problem: For many individuals and families in the United States, the problems of debt deteriorate into legal challenges, particularly into debt collection lawsuits and the possible need for bankruptcy. Debt collection lawsuits and especially bankruptcy proceedings, which require completion of a financial management course of questionable value, are challenging for the unassisted. Meanwhile, documentation practices in the consumer debt industry, along with some transparently abusive practices, suggest that many collection lawsuits could and should be successfully defended. But we will never have enough lawyers to offer a traditional attorney-client relationship to all in need, particularly because debt is considered less of a priority for legal services providers. Thus, we must find a way to deliver legal assistance through other methods. This project investigates the provision of paper-based self-help materials that implement the state of the art in adult communication, psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics.

The Questions: First, how closely does provision of paper-based state of the art legal self-help materials approximate the court and socioeconomic outcomes produced by an offer of a traditional attorney-client relationship? Second, does the financial management course required to complete bankruptcy provide any benefit to consumers?

The Study: The A2J Lab randomized individuals recently sued in a Connecticut small claims court debt collection proceeding to one of four conditions. Group 1 received state-of-the-art self-help materials and an incentive to undergo standard bankruptcy financial counseling. Group 2 receive state-of-the-art self-hep materials and an incentive to undergo placebo counseling addressing food safety. Group 3 received an offer of a Connecticut Legal Services attorney and an incentive to undergo standard bankruptcy financial counseling. Group 4 received an offer of a Connecticut Legal Services attorney and an incentive to undergo placebo counseling addressing food safety. The self-help materials covered the same topics as the Connecticut Legal Services attorney, namely, defense of the debt collection lawsuit, diagnosis as into either bankruptcy or debt management, and (if chosen) assistance in a bankruptcy proceeding. A2J Lab researchers will collect outcomes from small claims court files, from participant surveys, and from de-identified credit attributes from a credit reporting agency.

What We’ll Learn: A comparison of financial health across our four groups will provide gold-standard evidence regarding the effectiveness of self-help packets, financial counseling, and attorney representation. The result will be the richest and most detailed dataset ever conducted in an evaluation of what works for individuals whose debt problems have become legal problems.

Research Team: 
D. James Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; S. William Green Professor of Public Law, Harvard Law School
Dalié Jiménez, Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Lois R. Lupica, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Maine School of Law; Lead Designer, Community Economic Defense Project

The Setting: In partnership with the Boston Court Service Center and the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association, the Guardianship Service of Process study evaluates whether provision of state of the art self-help materials raises the rate of, and lowers the time required to effectuate, service of process in guardianship proceedings in four Massachusetts locations.

The Problem: Legal services providers reported to the A2J Lab that a common problem for individuals seeking help in self-help and brief advice centers was difficulty in serving process in guardianship proceedings. By way of background, guardianship proceedings are court cases in which a petitioner alleges that either a minor or an incapacitated adult is unable to make consequential decisions for themselves and therefore requires a guardian to do so. Service of process refers to notification of potentially interested parties about the existence of the guardianship proceeding. Court rules typically require ritualized methods of notification including, for example, use advertisements in local print media but excluding, for example, any form of electronic communication.

The Questions: Does provision of a self-help packet raise the rate of, and lower the time required to effectuate, service of process in guardianship proceedings?

The Study: The Boston Court Service Center and brief advice clinics run by the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association randomized whether individuals seeking assistance in initiating guardianship proceedings received state of the art self-help packets designed after an Access to Justice Lab hackathon. The A2J Lab measured the rate of and time necessary for service of process in guardianship of minor and guardianship of incapacitated persons cases.

What We’ll Learn: If self-help packets help people file for guardianship and then correctly complete service of process, legal services providers know what types of resources to invest in and how best to allocate their limited resources. And if the self-help materials are not effective, perhaps we can learn something about court-induced procedural hurdles and have a better understanding of how these hurdles may need to change.

Research Team:
Patricia Gansert, Assistant Data Analyst, Access to Justice Lab
D. James Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; S. William Green Professor of Public Law, Harvard Law School
Elizabath Guo, J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School
Natasha Khwaja, MPP Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

The Setting: The study investigates the effect on debt collection defendant outcomes of proactive provision of information, simplified forms, and encouragement to visit the Hamilton County Help Center (“HC”).  The interventions in this study attempted to combine simplification and nudges, two access to justice tools, to improve take-up of the HC.  Some research has found that such a combination had an effect in other disciplines.  The HC provides free tiered legal service, including limited-scope legal advice, based on the needs of those who access it.  Without proactive outreach, it is unclear that defendants in debt collection matters, a common category of litigant that never engages with their case, know that the HC exists.

The Problem: Typical plaintiffs in a debt collection matter are large companies, credit card firms or debt collecting businesses, for example. In Hamilton County, OH, the site of this study, defendants in debt collection matters must respond to the initial filing with a legal pleading called an “answer” to contest the matter. If they do not do so during the prescribed time period, they typically lose the case via a default judgment for the amount the plaintiff requested. In the answer, a defendant can assert legal defenses to the claim. There is no general federal or state right to counsel in civil litigation, including in debt collection matters,[1] making the services of the HC possibly important for low- and moderate-income defendants.

The overwhelming majority of cases filed against individuals in debt collection matters result in default judgements. When an individual defendant representing themselves does respond, they rarely assert any defense or file a procedurally sufficient answer. This study hypothesizes that a portion of debt collection cases could be defeated if defendants filed procedurally sufficient answers and asserted defenses.

[1] Lisa V. Martin, Securing Access to Justice for Children, 57 Harv. Civ. Rts. – Civ. Liberties L. Rev. 616, 636 (2022) (Martin argues that informing indigent legal actors about rights and remedies and how to navigate legal systems, is important to democracy).

The Questions: This study examined the effect of sending by mail legal information about the debt collection case process, including forms and instructions to file an answer and assert appropriate defenses, and encouragement to seek out assistance at the HC.  It was important to the HC that individuals come to the HC for help. The HC hypothesized that it could guide defendants with legal advice, even if the defendant’s legal remedies were associated not with “winning” the case but rather with mitigating its effects.  The HC hoped to draw on the behavioral science literature that suggests coupling nudges with simplified processes may result in increased take-up where those two solutions on their own likely will not.^[1]  The HC also hoped to use outreach to inform the community about its existence to appropriately signpost a promising path to seeking legal advice and guidance.^[2]   

^[1]See, Elizabeth Linos, Vikash Reddy, & Jesse Rothstein, Demystifying College Costs: How Nudges Can and Can’t Help, Cal. Pol’y Lab, Working Paper 2021-7. 

^[2] Nigel J. Balmer, Pascoe Pleasence, Tenielle Hagland, & Cosima McRae, Law…What is it Good For? How People see the Law, Lawyers and Courts in Australia, Vict. L. Found. (2019), at 53. 

The Study: The A2J Lab worked with the HC to develop and launch an evaluation of this proactive outreach using a randomized control trial (“RCT”).  In the RCT, the A2J Lab selected a random sample of defendants in new debt collection filing and then randomly assigned approximately half to receive a mailing with information about the debt collection proceeding, a simplified answer form, and encouragement to visit the HC (“Extra Information Group”) versus half to receive no mailing (“Status Quo Group”).  The A2J Lab collected data on case dispositions from the Clerk of Courts and visits to the HC from the HC.  The study produced the intended volume of 600 participants in December of 2023.

What We Learned: There was no statistically significant effect from the mailings on either the disposition the debt collection defendant experienced or the frequency of HC visits. Thus, the mailings in this study, unlike those in previous research on mailings to debt collection defendants, altered neither defendant behavior nor events in the debt collection case.

Research Team:
Hamilton County, OH Help Center

Resources:

The Setting: United States society will never devote enough resources to provide individuals facing a legal problem implicating a basic human need with an offer of a traditional attorney-client relationship, or indeed with an offer of any kind of legal service. Some individuals who require court system intervention will have to proceed using only self-help assistance. Those who focus on self-help often propose that providing court standard court forms will promote access to justice for individuals and families who cannot afford lawyers. One problem with this solution is that when lawyers write court forms, they often use legal jargon, complex language, and organizational structures alien to non-lawyers. So even if a court form is available to a pro se litigant, the litigant cannot use it.

There may be reasons other than promoting access to justice to prefer plain language court forms. Perhaps using plain langauge is a symbolic gesture that court systems, indeed all government systems, should make to demonstrate to the populace that the government is by and for the people. Perhaps such gestures might promote respect for legal and governmental systems, which might engender more voluntary compliance with laws. But a key question remains whether plain language court forms promote access to justice.

The Problem: Court forms often use legal jargon, complex language, and organizational structures that render the forms difficult for non-lawyers to deploy. That said, court systems’ procedural requirements, as well as the substantive laws courts administer, are so complex that perhaps a move to plain language court forms will not make an appreciable difference in promoting access to justice. If that is the case, then resources spent in rendering court forms into plain language might be more effectively dedicated to other access-to-justice promoting projects, such as simplification of procedures and/or substantive laws.

The Questions: Do plain language court forms appreciably promote access to justice?

The Study: Our study took place in a populous (approximately 500,000 residents), affluent (fewer than four percent of residents were below the poverty line), predominantly white county in Illinois. It focused on the form used to initiate a no-child divorce, specifically, the petition and accompanying instructions. County residents used this form, available on the websites of two legal services providers as well as the court’s own self-help center, to initiate divorces pro se. The A2J Lab created partnerships with the entities running these three websites to redirect traffic from them to a study-specific website that, within IRB-imposed limits, randomized which form a visitor would receive. One form used the court’s pre-existing, “legal language” style; the other form grew out of a court-led effort to produce plain language forms. The website provided information about the study and requested that users enter their names and dates of birth. Users who opted out of the study were, at IRB’s insistence, provided the plain language form. 318 unique participants downloaded one of the two study forms. Users could, and likely did, return to the website multiple times, and many likely returned and bypassed the study page requesting their names and dates of birth. IRB denied the A2J Lab’s request for a change in protocol when this fact was discovered.

What We Learned: There was no statistically significant difference across the legal language versus the plain language forms in either probability of filing for a divorce (.29 versus .30, respectively) nor in the amount of time needed to file (36.5 days versus 34.9 days, respectively). There was, however, some suggestive evidence that users preferred the plain language form. Because of the IRB restrictions noted above, members of both groups, but especially the legal language group, likely returned to the website, opted out of the study, and obtained the plain language form. IRB did not allow the A2J Lab to track users by Internet ID. Nevertheless, subsequent analysis revealed that, among those who did succeed in filing for divorce, 82% of the group randomized to legal language used the plain language form (accessible only through a repeat visit to the website after having first seen the legal language form) to do. While other explanations exist for this behavior, such as a desire among users to avoid being studied despite no cost to them of doing so and despite having already provided their names and birthdates, the most plausible explanation is that users preferred plain language and were willing to “pay” small costs in time and effort to obtain that form.

Research Team:
April Faith-Slaker, Executive Director, Texas Access to Justice Commission
D. James Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; S. William Green Professor of Public Law, Harvard Law School

The Setting: There are two ways to view this project. First, the ability to get married, and to get divorced, are both fundamental federal constitutional rights in the United States. But only the latter requires a lawsuit: marriage is the only contract that the contracting parties cannot dissolve on their own. The requirement that courts be involved in a divorce raises the possibility of access to justice problems for individuals who cannot afford to hire lawyers. Some state or local bar associations run services that attempt to match lawyers seeking certain kinds of pro bono matters (e.g., such as divorce) with clients who have that type of problem (e.g., needing a divorce). There has never been a credible assessment of whether this kind of pro bono matching program improves access to justice for low-income individuals with any legal problem, including divorce.

The second way to conceptualize this research focuses on using RCTs as measuring tools. All court systems have certain procedures, paperwork requirements, informational requirements, and more. All courts have pro se litigants attempting to navigate the system without a lawyer. No one has ever proposed a way to measure, quantitatively, whether a court system is accessible to its pro se litigants.

The Problem: This study addressed two problems. First, until this study, we did not know whether state or local bar association pro bono matching services were effective at providing access to justice to low-income individuals. Second, until this study, no one had ever proposed or implemented a quantitative way to measure the pro se accessibility of a court system.

Questions: This research investigates two questions. First, how effective are pro bono matching services at providing access to justice for no-asset, no-income, no-custody, no-protection-order, no-alimony, no-child-support, and no-spousal support divorces? Are lawyers even necessary in this setting, which consists entirely of providing relevant paperwork? Second, how can we measure the pro se accessibility of a court system?

The Study: This study focused on the Philly VIP’s pro bono matching service. During the enrollment period (early 2010s), low-income Philadelphians with divorce matters called Philly VIP to request a match to a pro bono attorney for assistance in obtaining divorces. Philly VIP was the provider of last resort for these cases: no other free legal services provider at this time handled simple divorce matters. The study population consisted of 311 Philadelphians randomized either to a Philly VIP attempt to match them to a pro bono attorney or to no such attempt. Subsequent analysis revealed that, overwhelmingly, study participants sought simple divorces and nothing else. No opposing spouse contested the divorce. There were no child custody, child support, spousal support, alimony, or domestic violence matters, and only a vanishingly small fraction of participants had either assets or income streams for division. In all participants’ cases combined, there were no live hearings, four contested motions filed, and one contested court ruling. In other words, the process of obtaining divorces was wholly and entirely a matter of providing the right paperwork at the right time. 

In addition, the A2J Lab proposed to define a court system as pro se accessible if an RCT revealed that the court’s adjudicatory outputs were “roughly the same” (a definition that required further elaboration) for litigants with lawyers versus litigants without lawyers. Thus, this study also demonstrated how an RCT with a traditional attorney-client relationship involved in one of its treatment conditions can serve as a measuring stick for the pro se accessibility of a court system, in this case the Philadelphia County divorce system in the early 2010s. 

What We Learned: Even though these divorce matters, with a tiny number of exceptions, entirely of providing the right paperwork to the court system at the right time, the Philly VIP pro bono matching service made an enormous difference. Study participants randomized to a Philly VIP attempt to match them to a pro bono attorney achieved divorces in Philadelphia County at approximately four times the rate of participants randomized to no such attempted match. If one includes divorces obtained in other Pennsylvania counties, the Philly-VIP attempted match group achieved divorces at twice the rate of the no-attempted-match group. These enormous differences in success rates provided quantitative evidence that at this time, the Philadelphia County divorce system was not pro se accessible. Subsequent investigation suggested that the reason for this pro se inaccessibility was likely the procedures applicable in this court at this time, which for example included a requirement that a pro se divorce seeker (i) file a paper called a “Praecipe To Transmit the Record to the Prothonotary” and (ii) find and use a typewriter to fill out a particular form. 

Research Team: 
D. James Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; S. William Green Professor of Public Law, Harvard Law School
Roseanna Sommers, Assistant Professor of Law University of Michigan
Ellen Degnan, Senior Staff Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center
Thomas Ferriss, Staff Data Scientist, Google
Philadelphia VIP

Resources:
Published version of the study: D. James Greiner, Ellen Degnan, Thomas Ferriss, and Rosenna Sommers, “Using random assignment to measure court accessibility for low-income divorce seekers,” PNAS April 6, 2021 118 (14)

Longer, unpublished writeup of the study: SRLN writeup of the study

Report of the study in The Atlantic

The Setting: Residential displacement can disrupt a host of life activities and undoubtedly takes an emotional toll on tenants and their families. To mitigate those impacts, we need to know more about how tenants find themselves as defendants in summary eviction proceedings, the role that lawyers play in stopping or delaying those proceedings, and whether existing legal solutions address the problems of eviction as we understand them.

The Questions: How well do lawyers allocate the scarce resource of their time? Does legal representation yield improved outcomes for those facing eviction?

The Study: With its field partners, the A2J Lab has designed a double-randomized study. This RCT will investigate (1) how well lawyers make decisions about whom to represent; and (2) whether outcomes with direct representation are measurably different from those where tenants only have access to self-help materials. After staff attorneys conduct intake and make provisional representation decisions, the A2J Lab will randomize each potential client into one of two groups (the first level of randomization). In the first group, the attorney’s decision will be followed; in the second group, another random decision will replace the attorney’s. Among that second group, a computer-based randomizer will “decide” whether the potential client receives an offer of representation or self-help materials (the second level of randomization).

What We Hoped to Learn: This RCT design was intended to help identify which eviction defendants’ outcomes truly depend on representation, whether those outcomes are continuances, stays of execution, or even possession of the apartment. It also was intended to reveal whether the offer of direct representation increases the probability of success relative to receiving the self-help packet. Considering the larger social impact of eviction, this study was expected to include non-adjudicatory outcomes measures such as the incidence of homelessness, unemployment, and adverse health effects, among other individual welfare consequences.

Research Team:
Access to Justice Lab
Rhode Island Center for Justice
Roger Williams University School of Law
New Mexico Legal Aid
University of New Mexico School of Law