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Self-help center planned for this fall with ease burdens for civil court and litigants

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News

Published: September 3, 2015

This fall, litigants in the Franklin County Municipal Court civil division will have a resource on which to fall back if they choose to represent themselves.

The FCMC Assisted Civil Self-Help Center will be open to pro se litigants who suffer financial hardship and will decrease barriers to justice and the burden on the civil court system.

The center was the brainchild of a group of newly practicing attorneys in 2012, the Columbus Bar Foundation’s Rising Stars, who were tasked with identifying potential improvements to access to justice in the Franklin County area.

Looking to the Clark County Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas as an example, the Rising Stars pitched the idea of a civil self-help center for indigent pro se litigants to the CBF.

Judge Carrie Glaeden, vice president of the Columbus Bar Foundation Board of Trustees, was also on the board when the young lawyers proposed the idea.

“They said, ‘Gosh, it would be really neat if we could do something where people could just walk in, they have civil concerns and issues, there are pamphlets and forms that they have access to and help if they would like assistance in understanding those pamphlets and forms,’” Glaeden said. “So then the Rising Stars divided up into different groups to say, OK, how much space would somebody need, what kind of cases could or should be heard, what kind of equipment will be needed and what kind of staffing should this center have.”

After meetings with the Law Library Fund and the Franklin County commissioners, the newly renovated Hall of Justice was identified as the space for the new center, just across from the Law Library. The start-up costs for the center will be funded with a grant from the Law Library Association Fund.

“I pitched it to my fellow judges and a majority approved a special projects fund,” Glaeden said of the expenses that the court needed to run the center after start-up costs.

For the past year, litigants have been paying an extra dollar on all filing fees for civil cases and court costs for all traffic and criminal cases. The CBF estimates that the added dollar will generate approximately $90,000 annually to fund a Moritz College of Law recent graduate and fellow to staff the center.

Pro se litigants can use the center for any civil matters.

“One of the things that we want to start out with, because we want to start small, is sealing of the records and certificates of qualified employment applications,” Glaeden said.

But visitors to the center should not be looking to get legal advice just yet. The staffer will only be there to provide clarifications and help filling out forms, a sort of guide for those who have trouble navigating the court system.

“It is a fine line between telling people what forms they need and what goes on what line and being able to interpret forms for them,” Glaeden said. “In the future, what we hope to have is pro bono attorneys in the area that are interested in coming and meeting with people on legal issues.”

But for now, pro se litigants will be able to come to the center and get help understanding evictions or small claims matters, for example.

The center will not only ease some of the clogged lines in the civil system, but it will spare many litigants the confusion and pressure they may feel when they represent themselves, not to mention, time and money.

“There is a high population in the Franklin County area who do not make enough money to afford their own attorney,” Glaeden said. “Legal Aid can’t handle the volume and, as you probably know, their funding has been cut substantially.”

A common problem, Glaeden said, is pro se litigants who waste their money because they don’t know what court procedures they can and cannot do. For example, in cases of sealed records, a person must first qualify to get their record sealed and there is a $50 filing fee after that.

“If they don’t qualify, they’ve just lost their $50 fee,” Glaeden said.

Other times, people don’t know that they need to file an answer if they are being sued and that they can have a default judgment entered against them if they do nothing.

“And so, this is to help people have access to justice and to at least help them get their forms done correctly or to answer a civil case properly so that they can get their foot in the door on civil cases,” Glaeden said.

The center will open this fall and will be staffed by Moritz fellow Kayla Callahan. Callahan was selected from a pool of 2015 law school graduates.

“The ultimate goal is to develop the FCMC self-help center into a user-friendly resource that both serves the needs of pro se litigants and addresses the issues identified by the court when it created the center,” Callahan said in an email. “Since I am the first fellow, I simply hope to lay a solid foundation for the help center so that it can continue to not only grow, but flourish, after my tenure is over.”

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