How to Create User-Friendly Legal Information and Resources

Steps for making civil courts more effective

Fact Sheet
Projects: Courts & Communities
Share
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
How to Create User-Friendly Legal Information and Resources
The Pew Charitable Trusts

Overview

Clear, accessible legal information helps court users without lawyers understand what they need to do, where they need to go, and how to engage with the court and with their case. To make courts easier to navigate, this information should be widely available and easy to find via basic web searches and on official documents (e.g., a summons includes a QR code that leads to online legal information).

Courts can make their information and resources more user-friendly by implementing two key practices:

  • Make court and legal information discoverable online, in person, and by phone.
  • Ensure that court forms include, in easy-to-understand formats and plain language, the information users need to make educated decisions about their cases.

After extensive research, The Pew Charitable Trusts has developed a framework outlining how and why courts should modernize.1 These steps arise from that work and can help programmatic and operational court staff, along with court leadership, assess the quality and breadth of information and resources they provide to court users; identify opportunities to improve; and decide—with input from relevant stakeholders—which of those opportunities to pursue and how.

Step 1: Bring together relevant court staff and external stakeholders

These groups can contribute important perspectives and insights about how to create and disseminate user-friendly court information and resources.

  • Court users can test forms, websites, and tools (e.g., remote conferencing platforms) to ensure that these resources are easy to find, use, and understand.
  • Leadership/administrative officers can champion internal initiatives, establish partnerships with civil legal aid providers and pro bono organizations, and prioritize building or improving the court’s online resources. Their buy-in is critical to the success of these efforts.
  • Judges can review redesigned forms and develop referral protocols to connect court users with resources (e.g., rental assistance, self-help, legal aid).
  • Clerks can provide feedback about barriers that court users encounter and ensure that the same high-quality information is consistently provided across jurisdictions by publicly posting relevant resources (e.g., flyers).
  • Access to justice staff can identify gaps in available resources and champion solutions that support court users in finding and accessing information about their cases.
  • Self-help staff can identify court users’ problem areas, ways that the court can provide more and clearer information, and additional resources to support users without attorneys; recommend strategies to reduce user confusion; and partner with other court personnel to improve the robustness and usability of court information and services.
  • Research staff can measure how well reforms designed to better connect court users with information and resources are working and conduct user testing.
  • Website administrators can monitor site analytics to understand user demand for information on various topics (e.g., which webpage has the highest traffic), lead user testing efforts, and maintain content quality.
  • Forms developers can update materials to improve content and usability.
  • Community partners (e.g., schools, food banks, housing advocacy organizations) can give feedback about legal needs and information gaps in their communities.
  • External researchers can test court websites for search optimization (e.g., checking if court resources are among the top results in a search for “debt collection answer form”), conduct accessibility audits, translate resources into plain language, and help courts build their internal capacity to conduct research.
  • Legal stakeholders (e.g., civil legal aid, pro bono lawyers, law firms) can offer insight into the barriers that selfrepresented court users face and provide support services for users without attorneys (e.g., setting up a lawyer-for-aday program or running domestic violence legal services).

Step 2: Assess current practices and set next steps

The following set of key metrics can enable courts to assess their progress toward improving the quality and breadth of court and partner resources. (See Tables 1 and 2.)

For each metric, determine whether the answer to the initial question is yes or no using the suggested measure. When the answer is no, the court should pursue the suggested next steps in collaboration with staff and stakeholders. The suggested steps are not prescriptive; instead, they provide ideas and options for getting started. The included state examples can help courts determine what actions are feasible given available resources. 

Table 1

Court Users Should Be Able to Easily Find Legal Information

Metrics, suggested steps, and state examples and resources

Metric If not, suggested next steps Examples and resources

Can court users find accurate information about which court and courtroom to go to and how to get there?

How to measure it:

Use “secret shopper” assessments (in which a professional tester poses as a consumer) to evaluate the usability of the information available on the court website and over the phone.
  • For each courthouse location, add this information to the website:
    • Phone number.
    • Hours of operation.
    • Parking and fees.
    • Public transit directions.
    • Courthouse map.
    • Courtroom locations.
    • Child care and lactation rooms.
    • Dress code and decorum guidance.
  • Make online content printable and use QR codes to direct readers to online resources.
  • Ensure that court personnel who field user phone calls have access to this information.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Clerks
  • Self-help
  • Website administrators

External Experts:

  • Researchers

In 2022, The Turnout, a consulting firm specializing in policy, research, and technology, in partnership with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and Stanford University’s Legal Design Lab, developed a taxonomy to help court websites—particularly their information on location, hours, and other basics—be more discoverable by online search engines. The Illinois and California courts have adopted the taxonomy.

Can court users find information about their rights as litigants (e.g., request language interpreters, access fee waivers, and request disability-related accommodations)?

How to measure it:

Conduct secret shopper assessments of information provided over the phone, and user test the website (e.g., ask court users to navigate various scenarios, such as requesting an interpreter).
  • Work with court personnel to identify and address challenges users face when seeking information about how to request a fee waiver, accommodation, or interpreter.
  • In collaboration with court staff who regularly interface with unrepresented litigants, develop clear, plain language for informational resources and test the language with court users.
  • Ensure that court personnel who field user phone calls have access to this information.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Clerks
  • Form developers
  • Leadership
  • Self-help
  • Website administrators

Court users

Are court users accessing the court website and finding the information they need to navigate their legal issue?

How to measure it:

Review site analytics, such as the number of site visits, repeat visitors, bounce rates, and time spent on relevant pages.
  • Improve the court website’s search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that high-quality legal information is readily discoverable online, including working with partners to link their sites to the court’s website, ensuring that content and headings include keywords that align to searches, and adding schema—structured microdata in the website code—that allows search engines to more easily read the content.
  • Advertise the court’s website and services on local radio stations, in newspapers, on public transit, and on billboards.
  • Embed a thumbs-up/thumbs-down button or short question (e.g., “Was this information helpful?”) on all webpages with legal or court-access information to capture user feedback.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Website administrators

External Experts

  • Researchers

External Experts:

  • Court users
  • Stanford University’s Legal Design Lab created guides on improving a website’s discovery and ranking and performance as well as a Legal Schema Markup tool, which can help courts generate specific code to improve their websites’ SEO.
  • The Illinois courts placed ads on transit in areas of Chicago with high rates of eviction cases to promote eviction diversion programs and resources, such as rental assistance, mediation services, and free legal aid.
  • California’s self-help website and Ohio Legal Help use a thumbs-up/thumbs-down format for user surveys.
  • The Court Voices Project outlines how to capture user feedback about court services, such as by embedding surveys into email signatures and using targeted questions.
  • California conducted extensive user testing when redesigning its online legal assistance portal and incorporated a feedback widget; 70% of users reported that the content was helpful.
  • Online resources, such as Optimal Workshop, offer tools for conducting website usability testing and includes resources on how to determine where court users first click when looking for information and how to organize information via website tree structures.
  • The New Jersey judiciary created a notice advising Spanish-speaking residents of their rights related to notarios públicos—nonlawyers who offer legal services such as representing a client in court— posted it in courthouses, and mailed hundreds of informational letters to nonprofits, libraries, and service providers.

Do court users make informed choices about how to engage in a case?

How to measure it:

Survey litigants, by mail or text, about why they did or did not participate in a lawsuit. (Use contact information pulled from summonses or other relevant court documents.)
  • Revise court forms, such as the summons, to clearly convey the consequences of not participating in a court case and explain the process for participating (e.g., users must file an answer to have a hearing).
  • Work with relevant court personnel to update and improve summons forms or relevant court rules.
  • Establish mechanisms to regularly capture feedback from court users about their experience in court or when receiving court services. For example, at the end of a hearing, the court could send attendees a short survey, via text or email, asking why they chose to participate and if they felt they were prepared to participate.
  • Develop plain-language materials explaining the conditions under which a judgment can be set aside and providing key information for users wishing to get a judgment set aside, such as deadlines for filing and required documentation.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Form developers
  • Leadership
  • Self-help
  • Researchers

External Experts

  • Researchers

Court users
  • Researchers at Indiana University partnered with the state courts to send text messages asking defendants who participated remotely in debt collection lawsuits why they chose to participate and requesting that they complete a survey, which received high response rates.
  • Stanford University’s Legal Design Lab redesigned the summons form for Hamilton County, Ohio, (which includes Cincinnati) to use clear language to explain the potential consequences of not responding to a lawsuit, including: “You could be given seven days or less to leave your home. If you do not file an answer, the landlord may win a judgment against you for all the money they claim you owe. If you don’t go to court, your landlord can evict you automatically.”

Sources: The Court Data Standardization Project, “Court Data Standard Project Documentation”; Judicial Branch of California, “Find Your Court”; Judicial Branch of California, “Request for Interpreter (Civil) (INT-300)” (2016); Judicial Branch of California, “Disability Accommodation Request (MC-410)” (2021); Illinois Courts, “Find Your Court”; North Carolina Judicial Branch, “Request for Disability Accommodation”; Stanford Legal Design Lab, “Improve Your Discovery & Rank”; Stanford Legal Design Lab, “Improve Your Tech Performance”; Stanford Legal Design Lab: A Better Legal Internet, “Markup Your Site With Legal Schema”; National Center for State Courts, “Eviction Diversion Outreach Strategies”; Judicial Branch of California, “Eviction Cases in California”; Ohio Legal Help, “Eviction in Ohio”; LaGratta Consulting, “Court Voices Project: Using Court User Feedback to Guide Courts’ Pandemic Responses” (2022); Optimal Workshop, “Get Fast, Actionable Insights”; New Jersey Courts, “New Jersey Judiciary Warns Litigants Against Notarios Públicos Who Are Not Authorized to Practice Law,” (Oct. 14, 2015); Stanford Legal Design Lab: Eviction Innovation, “Eviction Summons Redesign in Cincinnati, OH,” (Jan. 28, 2020); C. Chiappetta, “New California Civil Court Web Portal: A Model for Other States?” (2022); S. Nazem, (May 18, 2023); S. Nazem, (principal court management consultant, National Center for State Courts), (June 6, 2023); Victor Quintanilla, Kurt Hugenberg, Ryan Hutchings, and Nedem Yel, “Accessing Justice with Zoom: Experiences and Outcomes in Online Civil Courts” (2023)

Table 2

Court Users Should Be Able to Easily Understand Self-Help Materials and Complete Forms

Metrics, suggested steps, and state examples and resources

Metric If not, suggested next steps State examples

Does the court’s website or jurisdiction’s legal assistance portal include plain-language legal information for all case types (e.g., the steps in a case, what happens when people do not participate in a case)?

How to measure it:

Conduct website testing with court users and self-help staff to determine the appropriate level of textual complexity; do not rely solely on reading-level assessments for this because, although useful as a starting point, they do not fully capture how understandable or actionable the information is.
  • Develop or revise online self-help materials with input from court staff and external stakeholders, putting the priority on content about the most common legal issues.
  • Develop content related to people’s rights as litigants—such as the right to provide testimony and evidence—and to roles and responsibilities in court hearings.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Self-help
  • Website administrators

External Experts

  • Community partners
  • Legal stakeholders

Court users
  • NCSC has developed best practices for creating self-help materials that define accuracy, clarity, simplicity, procedural fairness, and usercenteredness—and provide strategies to test for these elements.
  • OpenAdvocate, which was developed in collaboration with legal service providers, has a tool that supports website readability by flagging challenging words and phrases and recommending solutions, such as shortening sentences or using synonyms.
  • The National Center for Education Statistics has an interactive map showing community-level literacy needs, which can provide courts with initial data to inform the appropriate reading level for their materials.
  • The California courts conducted extensive user testing of their new self-help website and translated it into Spanish.

Are court forms written in a way that allows court users to find what they need, understand what they find, and use the information without help?

How to measure it:

Test court forms with court users and self-help staff.
  • Set standards for plain-language usage in case file information.
  • Identify the most frequently filed and accessed forms; update them to remove legalese or confusing terms (e.g., “laches, estoppel, or unclean hands” as an affirmative defense in a debt collection answer form).
  • Test language with court users and relevant staff, such as clerks and self-help personnel. External experts can help with testing.
  • Work with local court clerks and judges to ensure that the new forms are being used consistently across jurisdictions.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Self-help
  • Website administrators

External Experts

  • Community partners
  • Legal stakeholders

Court users
  • Suffolk University’s Legal Innovation & Technology Lab has a Rate My PDF tool, which courts can use to assess the relative complexity, reading level, number of difficult words, and use of passive voice in their PDFs.
  • NCSC has an online Forms Camp to help courts improve the design of their forms.
  • NCSC has developed a glossary that identifies plain language alternatives to common legal terms and phrases (e.g., using “according to” instead of “pursuant” and “delivery of court papers” instead of “service of process”).
  • Massachusetts has published trial court readability guidelines, which provide direction on structure, appearance, and format and outline strategies for field testing forms and self-help materials.

Do the court’s website and forms comply with federal and local government digital accessibility and language access requirements?

How to measure it:

Conduct accessibility testing and review the court website for multilingual content.
  • Consider partnering with an external evaluator with expertise in accessibility to address issues identified through testing.
  • Educate staff members, across departments and levels of seniority, about the importance of accessibility and what needs to be done at the local and state levels to ensure that the court website is accessible.
  • Review local needs to account for all sizable non-English-speaking populations.
  • Work with relevant staff to develop and deploy instructions and in-person or over-the-phone support, in users’ primary language, for court users with limited English proficiency.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Access to justice
  • Clerks
  • Leadership
  • Researchers
  • Website administrators

External Experts

  • Researchers
  • The U.S. Web Design System provides “principles, guidance, and code” that courts and other government entities can use to design accessible websites.
  • A2J Tech developed an accessibility guide for websites, which breaks down the requirements and includes guides for creating accessible PDFs.
  • The American Bar Association’s language access standards outline key practices for courts, such as how to select documents for translation and how to provide language access in court services.
  • The American Community Survey publishes five-year estimates, in Excel files, of the top languages spoken. For the most detailed information, review the data by core-based statistical areas, which are geographic areas defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget.
  • New Mexico’s court website and California’s self-help portal are available in English and Spanish. Both Spanish sites were translated by experts, rather than using automation.
  • Illinois courts require landlords to provide tenants with rental assistance information in English and Spanish when serving eviction notices; the courts also make copies of that information available in other commonly spoken languages: Polish, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, and Tagalog.
  • The federal government has a handbook for creating accessible forms and materials.

For high-volume case types in which most defendants represent themselves, do defendants engage in their case?

How to measure it:

Analyze bulk court data to identify how many defendants filed answers, participated in their hearings, or filed post-judgment motions or forms.
  • Create a standardized multiple-choice “answer” form for responding to a complaint or summons that lists the appropriate affirmative defenses for the relevant case type, is written in plain language, and asks defendants to pick one (or more).
  • Partner with court personnel who interface with court users to ensure that the answer, garnishment exemption, and fee waiver forms are user-friendly and to test various iterations of the form with court users.

Who’s involved:

Internal Experts:

  • Form developers
  • Leadership
  • Self-help
  • Researchers

External Experts

  • Researchers

Court users

Sources: National Center for State Courts, “Best Practices for Creating Legal Self-Help Materials,” (2023); OpenAdvocate, “WriteClearly”; National Center for Education Statistics, “U.S. State and County Estimates Resources”; C. Chiappetta, “New California Civil Court Web Portal: A Model for Other States?” (2022); National Center for State Courts, “Forms Camp 2022”; National Center for State Courts, “Interactive Plain Language Glossary”; Massachusetts Trial Court Self-Help Materials Task Force, “Readability Guidelines for Printed Self-Help Materials and Forms” (2018); U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), “How to Use USWDS”; A2J Tech, “Accessibility Guide,” (2023); American Bar Association, “Standards for Language Access in Courts” (2012); U.S. Census Bureau, “Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over: 2009-2013”; New Mexico Courts, “Inicio”; Judicial Branch of California, “Guía De Ayuda De Las Cortes De California”; Illinois Courts, “Approved Statewide Forms - Eviction”; U.S. General Services Administration, “Accessibility for Visual Designers”; Alaska Courts, “Answer & Counterclaim to Complaint to Collect a Debt (CIV-481)” (2016); U.S. Census Bureau, “Language Spoken at Home by Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over” (2010-2022), (Sept. 27, 2023); North Carolina Judicial Branch, “Judgment Calculator”; Suffolk University Law School’s Legal Innovation and Technology Lab, “Rate My PDF,” accessed Aug. 8, 2023

The work in action: Texas nonprofit tests educational packet for defendants

In an effort to address rising consumer debt claims, which the state judiciary reported accounted for 21% of all civil cases in fiscal year 2022, the Texas Judicial Council in 2020 recommended that the state Office of Court Administration develop an information packet to educate debt defendants about court processes.2 The packet would be sent to defendants shortly after they were notified about a lawsuit and would contain forms and information, written in plain language, to help defendants avoid a default judgment—an automatic judgment for the plaintiff entered when a defendant does not respond to a lawsuit.

In response, a justice-driven nonprofit, Texas Appleseed, created a model packet to test with English- and

Spanish-speaking community members. The Appleseed packet, developed with input from consumer law and access to justice experts, included a letter from the court detailing the lawsuit process and available legal support resources, a sample answer form with a list of common defenses to help litigants respond to the lawsuit, and detailed instructions on filling out and submitting the form. The organization gathered feedback on the packet via interviews with study participants.

In May 2023, Texas Appleseed released a report, “Improving Access to Justice in Consumer Debt Lawsuits,” that included the results of its user testing.3 The organization found that the packet not only helped defendants identify basic elements of the lawsuit and feel more positive about the process but also enabled them to access legal resources.

This improvement was especially felt by Spanish-speaking participants, who reported an increase in ease of understanding court documents and processes. Before reading the packet, 30% said it was easy or very easy to understand court materials and procedures. But after reading the packet, this share jumped to 90%, highlighting the importance of language accessibility. Participants also reported feeling better-equipped to navigate the courts, being more likely to take part in their cases, and having a greater understanding of the basic elements of the lawsuit, such as the correct court to respond to.

The report recommends that the courts move forward with a court-based pilot program to evaluate the impact that receiving the materials has on response rates and default judgment rates in consumer debt collection lawsuits. The end goal is to eventually implement the information packet statewide. The study moved a Texas court, which is now in conversation with Appleseed about possible pilot efforts, one step closer to helping debt defendants better navigate and participate in their cases, improving outcomes for individuals and the courts.4

Endnotes

  1. The Pew Charitable Trusts, “How to Make Civil Courts More Open, Effective, and Equitable” (2023), https://www.pewtrusts.org/research-and-analysis/reports/2023/09/how-to-make-civil-courts-more-open-effective-and-equitable.
  2. Texas Judicial Branch Office of Court Administration, “Annual Statistical Report for the Texas Judiciary” (2023), https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1456803/ar-statistical-fy-22-final.pdf; Texas Judicial Council, Civil Justice Committee Recommendations on Bail (2020), https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1449796/resolutions-approved-by-the-texas-judicial-council-september-24-2020_.pdf.
  3. B. Gordley et al., “Improving Access to Justice in Consumer Debt Lawsuits” (Texas Appleseed, 2023), https://www.texasappleseed.org/sites/default/files/Debt_Collection_Report_2023.pdf.
  4. A. Baddour and B. Gordley, director and senior policy analyst, Fair Financial Services Project at Texas Appleseed, video conference with Casey Chiappetta, principal associate, and Sarah Godfrey, officer, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Aug. 21, 2023.