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Monday, December 20, 2010

Ind. Courts - Stll more on: "Clark County Legal Self-Help Center has a green light, even if full judicial support is yet to be determined"; Marion County observations

Updating this ILB entry from May 27, 2010, Ben Zion Hershberg reported Dec. 17th in the Louisville Courier Journal:

Individuals and businesses have committed $19,000 in contributions to the Clark County Legal Self Help Center to buy computers and related equipment for use by the center’s low-income patrons.

The self-help center opened in the spring in the lobby of the Clark County Courthouse on Court Avenue in Jeffersonville, with students from the University of Louisville Law School and lawyers volunteering on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

The volunteers direct people with legal questions to organizations or lawyers who can help them fill out forms or find information they need to help themselves. The service, which is free, helps about 40 to 50 people a month, said Circuit Judge Daniel Moore, who helped start it.

The self-help center doesn’t provide formal legal advice or services, but Moore said it can provide “guidance and direction” to people not familiar with the legal system. * * *

The center is available for use by people with incomes up to 150 percent of the federal poverty guideline—about $22,000 a year for a four-person household.

Matt Thacker of the Jeffersonville News & Tribune wrote Dec. 18th:
JEFFERSONVILLE — Several computers will be set up at the Clark County Legal Self Help Center to assist people below the poverty level in completing legal documents, says Clark County Circuit Court Judge Dan Moore.

The computers were made possible through a community fundraising effort.

“This is an idea that is long overdue and this mix of business and personal supporters and established foundations speaks volumes about the special people in Clark County who care for their fellow citizen, who may be facing legal issues for the first time,” Moore said in a news release from the court. * * *

“I would like to see one of these in every county in the state,” said Judge Melissa May, of the Indiana Court of Appeals.

She is the chairperson of the Indiana Pro Bono Commission and was guest speaker at a dedication Tuesday for the computer phrase of the Legal Self Help Center, located on the first floor of the Clark County Government Building.

The concept for the center was initiated in late 2009 by Moore, along with a group of lawyer volunteers and Jill W. Oca, a certified public accountant who serves as chairperson of the Board of Planners.

Oca said the computers will be available only to those who are at the 150 percent federal poverty guideline or lower. The computers are intended for those who have no other options and no means to hire a private attorney.

“We continue to support local attorneys and refer persons to those attorney offices who have registered with the center,” she said. “This is all about supporting people who find themselves in a litigation setting, and we thank those lawyers who have volunteered to accept referrals.”

ILB Observations: Marion County had the basics of such a resource until this year. See this ILB entry from Jan. 2, 2010, headed "Closing this library, dismantling the resources, dismissing the librarian -- this is very unfortunate and falls into the 'whatever can they be thinking?' category"

Things appear to be worse for Marion County citizens one year later. The Jan. 2, 2010 entry included quotes from a story by the then-Star reporter, Francesca Jarosz:

Librarian Zoya Golban turned off the lights and locked the doors Wednesday at the Marion County Law Library for the last time.

The cozy repository for legal materials and publicly accessible computers on the third floor of the City-County Building will permanently close this year because of city budget cuts.

But the library's closing, court officials say, won't be the end of the help the center provided to the roughly 3,000 Marion County residents who represent themselves in civil cases each year.

Starting Monday, those self-represented (or "pro se") litigants will be directed to an existing cluster of four computers at the Family Resource Center on the main floor of the City-County Building. There, they will be able to obtain help in finding forms they need to file in court and print documents -- functions previously served by the law library.

Those who want to access books the law library offered will be sent to the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library, which will take on a portion of the law library's collection designed for people representing themselves in court. * * *

Library employees also will receive some training to help pro se litigants, but their resources are limited.

The library's public computers have time restrictions for usage. And since the library's staff has to answer questions on many different subjects, they can't focus solely on people seeking legal information, said Laura Bramble, chief executive officer of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library.

"In the past, we could send them on to the Marion County Law Library as they need additional help," Bramble said. "Now we won't be able to do that."

Another unanswered question is to what extent the library, which itself is facing budgetary challenges, will be able to update the books the county law library provides. Bramble said library staff would have to review how often the materials they receive need to be updated and at what cost.

Since the beginning of the year, the Marion County Central Library itself has been forced to seriously cut-back the hours it is open. It now does not open until 10 in the morning and is completely closed on Thursdays. Money for upgrading collections has been cut.

I use the Central Library frequently and haven't seen any identifiable collection from what had been the Marion County Law Library. While there, I have witnessed people coming in asking for help with locating Indiana Code citations being met with blank stares by library staff members.

What I do see at the Central Library is people lined up waiting for it to open in the mornings and people signing up on lengthy waiting lists for computer access. Access is essential to them because our state government has moved so many functions of state government online -- these people need computer access to login to meet unemployment comp requirements, to file FSSA claims, etc.

Forcing Marion County citizens to locate and learn to use computers in order to communicate with state government and the courts, while at the same time shutting the County Law Library and cutting back the Public Library hours and staff, seems rather perverse.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 20, 2010 01:26 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts