Thread by @ACarpenterProf

That feeling when four years of research finally sees the light of day.

A🧵& invitation for feedback on scholarship re: courts, judges, procedure, & access to justice.

Once upon a time (circa 2017), four intrepid colleagues, @alyxmark, @shanahanlawprof, Jessica Steinberg, & I set out on a journey.

Actual footage of our first meeting:

We’d observed that most work on courts as institutions – and especially on judicial behavior and procedure in state civil trial courts – wasn’t rooted in the empirical realities of state courts.

As access to justice researchers, we wanted to change that.

Turns out, we know an awful lot about courts that look like this:

And far less about courts that look like this:

So, we decided to combine forces and design a study that would reveal on-the-ground realities of judicial behavior, procedure, & the experiences of unrepresented people in lawyerless courts.

(Lawyerless courts = courts where more than three-quarters of cases involve unrepresented people. Most of America’s civil trial courts are lawyerless.)

We designed a multi-jx study, selecting three sites that rank at the top, middle, & bottom of the Justice Index.

At the start, we developed a four-part theoretical framework to guide our research questions & design.

We share that framework here bit.ly/3t1AIDC.

We spent 200+ hours sitting in courtrooms & produced verbatim transcripts of 357 hearings where at least one party lacked counsel. We also interviewed judges, court staff, & court-adjacent service providers.

Recently, we produced the first three papers based on this study.

In the beginning of the pandemic, Texas Law Review Online published COVID, Crisis and Courts, which draws on our data to show how COVID-driven changes in court operations create opportunities (and challenges) for access to justice reform. bit.ly/2OCD1xY

Hot off the presses at @Fordham Law Review is Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly. Here, we use the study to inform the hot topic of deregulating the lawyer's monopoly to allow nontraditional service providers to serve people in lawyerless courts...

...We show how judges rely on a shadow network of nonlawyer professionals who substitute for the traditional role of counsel--but for only one party. bit.ly/2OfFoqJ

Judges in Lawyerless Courts, forthcoming in @Georgetown Law Journal, reveals that judges across jurisdictions behave in largely similar ways when they interact with unrepresented people, including maintaining complexity & control...

...The article shows that the reality of judicial behavior in pro se cases falls far short of the prevailing vision of judicial role reform as an access to justice solution. bit.ly/30rJZsf

None of this work would be possible without the help of research assistants from @ColumbiaLaw, @sjquinney, @gwlaw, & @TempleLaw.

Thanks to Hilary Atkins, Michelle Bigony, Emily Bock, Anne Bonfiglio, Sophia Goh, Greg Hewitt, Esther Jiang, Joshua Katz, Michaela Lovejoy...

...Aryeh Mellman, Michelle Rodriguez, Seojin Park, Lindsay Pearlman Hannibal, Catherine Twigg (who spent HOURS sitting in courtrooms with @shanahanlawprof), Elenore Wade & Mason Walther.

Huge thanks to the generous colleagues who have given us feedback on this work from 1-1 communications to workshops.

Speaking of workshops...if you’re interested in hosting one of us for a workshop on any of these papers, say the word. Feel free to DM me.

Your faculty will not be disappointed. It’s not just our ideas. We positively ooze charm.

We’re already hard at work on other articles drawing on this rich dataset. In the meantime, we would love to have your feedback on and reactions to the pieces we’ve produced thus far.

Many scholars are doing amazing work in the state courts/judges/procedure space. Just few: @TonyaBrito, @elmacdowell, @ProfLlezlie, @AllysonGold, @emilyabenfer, @ProfQuintanilla, @zclopton, @jweinsteintull, @drmtown, Kathryn Sabbeth, and Michele Statz. Add more in comments!

This tweet would not be complete without acknowledging the vast debt we owe to the brightest guiding light & most generous mentor in the broader access to justice space, Dr. Rebecca Sandefur.

@shanahanlawprof and @alyxmark, anything I've missed?

And @lsudeall!

And @AndyBudzinski!

And @SaraJSGreene!

@GeorgetownLJ