are coming together to provide the public with free, reliable, neutral explanations of state law. It demonstrates the un
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Opening Courts to the Public
Opening Courts to the Public Public Legal Information as Common Ground for the Justice Community David Pantzer
People’s Law Library Web Content Coordinator, Maryland State Law Library, Annapolis
This article explores how a diverse group of contributors from Maryland’s legal community are coming together to provide the public with free, reliable, neutral explanations of state law. It demonstrates the unique role of public law libraries and suggests steps to increase cooperation and meet the legal needs of the poor. The Need for Free Public Legal Information Why should the public have the law explained clearly to them, free of charge? First, public understanding goes to the credibility of our institutions. Our political tradition suggests that the authority of the government derives from the consent of the governed. This is easier to say with a straight face when the governed are able to understand the law. This responsibility falls to each branch of government. In her February 2015 “State of the Judiciary Address,” Maryland Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera brought it home to the courts, recognizing that “people will accept judicial outcomes, even if
adverse to their side of the case, if they believe that they have been treated fairly and with respect. Put simply, process counts.” A big part of that process is simply understanding what they are going through. Second, whether they want it or not, nonlawyers often have an active role in their own cases. Despite the resourcefulness and commitment of the legal services community, less than one quarter of Maryland’s poor have access to a lawyer’s help in addressing legal needs. For this reason, many simply walk into the courtroom alone. Others manage to connect with a lawyer beforehand for brief advice. Public Legal Information as Common Ground for the Justice Community 61
Still others benefit from Maryland’s new rule-based mechanism for “limited appearances,” in which attorneys and clients agree to share the legal tasks involved in accomplishing client goals, even allowing an attorney to represent the client for as little as a single hearing. In all of these cases, litigants are better served when there are resources to help them navigate the system. Particularly in the case of limited appearances, professionalism suggests that lawyers have an interest in ensuring that limited-scope clients be prepared to succeed in the parts of legal matters they will handle alone. Indeed, the court system runs more smoothly when everyone, even those with lawyers, understands how it works. Clear understanding of the law and its processes helps prevent all litigants from having unrealistic expectations of the outcomes of their cases. Because many thousands of Marylanders appear in court alone each year, it benefits the self-represented, their opposing parties, court staff, and judges when the expectations of all parties are calibrated to legal reality.
The Statewide Websites Helping people to find legal information and understand the law is a challenging goal, but not a particularly controversial one. Many institutions are already trying to help the public to understand their rights and responsibilities and to access the available sources of help, using brochures, hotlines, websites, and apps. Every state has some form of “statewide website,” providing some level of legal information. The scope and coverage vary widely. In many cases, state sites are maintained by one or more legal-services nonprofits. In some states, a network of websites, run by various institutions, provides a patchwork of coverage. 62 Trends in State Courts 2016
In Maryland, the statewide website is called the People’s Law Library, or PLL (www.peoples-law.org). PLL is distinctive from many other free-legalinformation resources both in the breadth of its subject matter (which includes court process, legal research, alternative dispute resolution, and a wide array of substantive legal topics) and in the depth of coverage provided in its articles (including summaries of the law, links to primary and secondary legal sources, and referrals for legal services). While the PLL website has its historic roots in the legal academy and the legal-services community, it is currently funded by the judiciary and managed out of the Maryland State Law Library, a court-related agency.
…the People’s Law Library is distinctive from many other free-legal-information resources both in the breadth of its subject matter and in the depth of coverage provided in its articles… A Cooperative Content Development Model PLL’s single greatest strength is the diversity of its contributors. The project of explaining the law, more than most, can bring just about everyone together. Instead of leaving the prioritization, research, design, and writing of self-help legal information to one organization, PLL actively seeks out the perspectives, and the help, of legal (and nonlegal) professionals from a wide range of Maryland’s institutions. The cooperative approach might look like this: Law librarians and legal-services attorneys (who deal with a steady stream of practical legal questions) identify topics for which the public needs better information. Law librarians and law-school clinical programs have the skills and resources to sketch out this new content, identifying
Opening Courts to the Public
relevant laws, documents, and information. The experience of practicing attorneys and the perspectives of government employees and court staff add additional layers of depth to the content. After content is written and edited, language students and bilingual attorneys and translators provide non-English versions. The Maryland State Law Library organizes and maintains the content and coordinates its ongoing review when the law changes. When new content becomes available, public libraries, court staff, and a variety of nonprofit organizations put it in the hands of the public. Thus, many institutions participate in the project, yet each maintains its individual role and perspective within the broader community. Since the beginning of 2015, more than 100 new names have been added to the PLL contributors list (www.peoples-law.org/contributors). Because of PLL’s long service to the community, and its active promotion and wide readership, many organizations are willing to provide their expertise in developing, editing, and contributing to the site. The examples that follow form a checklist of the types of partnerships that an effective, statewide legal-information source will want to explore.
Individual attorneys: PLL relies on individual members of the bar, who offer time and expertise to create and update legal articles. Contributing to PLL is a form of reportable pro bono service that, in contrast to other equally valuable forms, can be performed at any time of day and from any location. This avenue of service is regularly promoted by the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland, the state’s main institutional clearinghouse of pro bono opportunities. Another attractive aspect of this form of pro bono service is its efficiency. Each article has the potential to help many people over time. Site analytics show that in a recent one-month
period, 59 of PLL’s legal-content articles recorded over 500 pageviews each. Lawyers can also point clients to articles on the site as a cost-efficient way to explain basic legal concepts and create realistic expectations. Attorneys also use the site. PLL articles provide quick, detailed entry points for attorneys exploring an unfamiliar area of law (perhaps to provide brief advice to pro bono clients).
Bar associations: The mission of the Maryland State Bar Association includes promoting “access to justice, service to the public and respect for the rule of law.” Working with PLL to enhance public awareness and understanding of the law by updating and promoting PLL’s website directly advances those three components of its mission. The Maryland State Bar Association also supports PLL’s mission by promoting opportunities to use and contribute to the site to its members and to local and specialty bar associations.
…the mission of the State Bar Association includes promoting “access to justice, service to the public and respect for the rule of law”…and updating and promoting PLL’s website directly advances those three components… Law schools: For several years, partnerships between PLL and law-clinic courses in several Maryland and Washington, D.C. law schools have provided more new content than any other category of partnership. Specific partnership models vary from school to school, but generally PLL provides “plain language” training for students, as a supplement to their legal-writing coursework. The students work to research an issue and create an explanatory article that is vetted through a series of checks for plain language, as well as for content accuracy. Public Legal Information as Common Ground for the Justice Community 63
www.peoples-law.org
Government lawyers and employees:
The judicial branch: PLL’s location within the
Traditionally, because of actual and perceived conflicts of interest, government lawyers have a harder time than most delivering pro bono services. However, the activities of writing and editing clear, neutral explanations of the law and its processes serves governmental missions and is virtually conflict-free. The Maryland Office of the Attorney General has enthusiastically supported a relationship with PLL, hosting in-house trainings for their attorneys and promoting service to the site. Other contributors come from municipal, state, and federal government.
judicial branch is significant, allowing a diverse array of institutions and organizations to confidently refer self-represented litigants to the site, without fearing content bias. Further, PLL benefits from being based out of the Maryland State Law Library, a statutory institution long identified with free, neutral legal information. PLL’s relationship with the judiciary also provides court clerks and other court employees with a direct voice in shaping content priorities. PLL is actively promoted by court personnel, the final interface between the public and the justice system.
The Maryland legal-services community:
Universities: PLL has worked as a community
A key set of partners comes from the legal nonprofits that directly serve the needs of the poor—Maryland Legal Aid, the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, and a host of other legal-services organizations. PLL provides this community with a popular, well-publicized forum for explaining specific legal rights and procedures to the public. These organizations bring not only expertise, but also tremendous knowledge of the current needs of the poor.
partner with translation classes at Towson University and the University of Maryland. These partnerships allow students to perform real-world work, which will benefit the community, and provide valuable professional experience.
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The library community: Access to public legal information is an arena in which public law libraries have a leading role to play. Like legal-services providers, public libraries regularly field a high
Opening Courts to the Public
volume of requests for information and help. However, perhaps even more than legal-services providers, libraries are understood to be neutral spaces, where a landlord or a tenant, a plaintiff or a defendant, an appellant, a victim, or a smallbusiness owner can come for information. PLL and the Maryland State Law Library provide training and resources to public librarians to help them meet the challenge of responding to these patrons. This list is not comprehensive. Organizations like PLL may also have much to gain by working with schools, businesses, community groups, and churches. However, each of the institutions highlighted above contribute significantly to PLL’s mission.
The Opportunities and Limitations of Technology PLL is a website. It will likely remain a website as long as it exists, or until changes in technology do away with websites entirely. But as this article shows, PLL’s usefulness is based on its network of partners and contributors. PLL invites the justice community to join in its legal information project, for the public good. But PLL also extends itself beyond the Web, as a broader educational service to Marylanders, by partnering in the justice initiatives of other institutions. Such initiatives include: partnering with the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland and the Maryland State Bar Association Section on the Delivery of Legal Services to make librarians and court clerks aware of legal resources partnering with the MSBA Section on Family and Juvenile Law and the Administrative Office of the Courts Department of Family Administration to create educational materials for the public
working with Maryland Legal Aid and area law schools to provide training to law students developing an offline version of its materials for non-networked prison libraries
Next Steps Each of the institutional relationships this article describes requires trust, creativity, and ongoing work from both sides. Maintaining this breadth and depth of cooperation requires trying new things. Here are some of PLL’s current priorities for future growth.
Excerpt from Maryland’s Peoples Law Library Website http://www.peoples-law.org/ evaluate-my-situation
The PLL Fellows initiative hires two or three graduating law students, or recently admitted attorneys, annually for temporary research and writing fellowships. PLL is improving the non-English-translation process with an automated translation management program that can track small units of English text as they are updated and prompt for retranslation of those units into target languages. Finally, PLL is pursuing deeper coordination with other institutions that provide neutral legal information to the public. For example, with help from the Maryland Legal Services Corporation, PLL co-maintains a legal services directory with the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland and is working to merge certain legal articles with related materials maintained by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General. Working with others in these ways provides greater efficiency and strengthens the relationships that help the legal community to achieve mutual goals and improve the quality of justice in Maryland.
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