Humble Beginnings
MichiganLegalHelp.org is a website designed to
provide legal information for self-represented litigants. The Michigan Legal
Help Program (MLHP), although largely known for its website, has another,
equally important aspect – its self-help centers (SHCs). Self-help centers are brick-and-mortar
extensions of MichiganLegalHelp.org
– places where visitors can get free access to a computer and a high-speed Internet
connection in order to use the website.
In addition, each center is staffed with navigators who assist visitors with using the website and finding the information they need. Courts in communities with SHCs report great satisfaction with the noticeable benefits they provide to self-represented litigants and court functions.
The Michigan Legal Help website officially
launched in August of 2012. By November
of that same year, four SHCs had already been established in Allegan, Oakland,
Oscoda, and Wayne Counties. Four other self-help
centers (Kent, Berrien, Ottawa, and Washtenaw Counties) existed before Michigan
Legal Help. Just over five years later,
in 2017, the MLHP had a total of 18 centers within its network but had yet to
conduct a comprehensive evaluation of them.
In light of this, Angela Tripp, the director
of the MLHP, invited Bridgeport Consulting to evaluate MLHP’s self-help centers
and the related network via a national scan of SHC models and best practices,
followed by interviews with both MLHP-affiliated and non-affiliated SHCs in
Michigan. We encourage court staff to
review the entire report and to consider the
benefit a local SHC might have in their community.
Self-Help Centers Across the
Nation
The Michigan Legal Help Program SHCs are far
from the only ones in existence; in fact, there are about 500 SHCs across the
country. To better understand the
Michigan Legal Help Program’s centers and how to improve them, let’s briefly
explore the general landscape of SHCs. We
will do this using the 2014 Self-Help Center Census conducted
by the American Bar Association. This
census included responses from 222 centers in the United States from 31 states.
Here are some noteworthy conclusions:
●
American self-help centers serve
almost 3.7 million people a year.
●
The most popular substantive areas
of law covered by these self-help centers were family law (88 percent), child
support (82 percent), and domestic violence (78 percent).
●
About 33 percent of SHCs reported
that they had just one full-time equivalent employee.
●
Fifty-one percent% of centers used
volunteers. Of these centers, about 55%
utilized attorney volunteers and about 45 percent utilized college student
volunteers.
●
Forty-nine percent of SHCs
received funding from courts, making it the most popular funding source. Courts were the most popular primary source of
funding as well, accounting for 4 percent of SHCs in the census.
For more information, please view the Self-Help
Center Census by the American Bar Association.
MLHP’s Self-Help Center Network
Each one of the Michigan Legal Help Program’s
SHCs are based on one of two models, either the library/community-based model
or the court-based model. As the name
suggests, library/community-based SHCs are housed within a library or community
organization and depend on the host organization to be its main support system.
This model usually receives very little
outside funding, utilizing the pre-existing library or community organization
staff to act as navigators for the center. One of this model’s strengths is its low cost
to operate. The library model also
benefits from the fact that the center is contained within an institution
already associated with education and respected within the community. Some of the shortcomings of this model
include its relative inability to handle heavy visitor traffic and its
ineffectiveness at providing high-intensity services. These are both due to its multipurposing of
staff and little use of external resources or funding.
In contrast to the library/community-based
model, there is the court-based model.
By nature, court-based centers are more closely tied to the courts by
both location and financial support.
They receive funding either from the court or the county and are housed
within the courthouse and friend of the court (FOC) offices. They often have a small staff dedicated to
the center and supplement this staff with volunteers.
The main strengths of this model include its
ability to handle high levels of traffic and its proximity to the courts. Clients are able to easily visit the center
before or after visiting the court or FOC office. Some of the shortcomings of this model are
the higher cost to operate and that accessibility is sometimes hindered by the
court or FOC’s security and hours of operation.
It is worth noting that the court and
library/community model types reflect the specific details of the center itself
and not the support system that envelopes it.
All of the MLHP’s centers exist within the same system. The SHC network is mostly a loose
confederation in the sense that each center has quite a bit of autonomy. Each makes decisions such as the location of
their workstations, the members of their planning committee, and their approach
to public relations. However, they
follow a single set of operating protocols that act as guidelines to ensure
consistent, quality service and use of the resources on the Michigan Legal Help
website.
Bridgeport’s report included a total of seven
recommendations to the Michigan Legal Help Program to help our centers better
serve their visitors. Most of these
recommendations could be summarized by two core suggestions. The first would be to advocate for increased
court support for self-help centers to allow them to continue providing currently
offered services as well as offer new ones, such as assistance with
e-filing. The second would be to foster
a more data-driven, efficient, and collaborative network and expand this
network to yet-unserved portions of the state.
The Michigan Legal Help Program has already
begun implementing many of these suggestions.
The most evident are its efforts to create a more involved, tight-knit
community of SHCs. These efforts include
engaging navigators by providing monthly webinars that aim to educate self-help
center staff on substantive law topics and general tips for better center
administration. The webinars provided so
far include a lecture by Michael Kiehne, Michigan Legal Help’s own staff
attorney, on expungement, including an overview of the legal process and
factors considered in eligibility. Annette Wells, the Executive Director of
Community Mediation Services, also gave a presentation on mediation, including
an overview of the process, the types of cases that are mediated, and how to
find the closest community dispute resolution center. Future webinars will cover limited-scope
representation, e-filing, and other legal topics covered by Michigan Legal
Help.
All of us at the Michigan Legal Help Program
are grateful that Bridgeport Consulting was able to provide insight into how we
can improve our self-help center network and we look forward to putting those
perceptive recommendations to work. To
learn more about starting a MLH self-help center in your area, contact Ramzi
Badwi at 734-714-3243 or rbadwi@mplp.org.