Help Where it is Needed
Chicago Appleseed, with pro bono assistance from attorneys at Skadden Arps, has been evaluating recent changes to the parentage court. We’ve met with practitioners, court-personnel and legal aid attorneys familiar with the parentage court before and after it moved into the Daley Center, as well as before and after it expanded to include additional courtrooms and additional judges.
Our final report is still pending, but one important consensus has emerged among the stakeholders: it would be very detrimental to the many pro se litigants in the parentage court if the Chicago Law Clinic Help Desk were moved from its current location in the parentage court waiting room. Although we are not aware of a specific or final plan, it has been rumored that the parentage help desk will soon be moved to a central location on the concourse level with other help desks currently placed in the Daley Center.
We’re writing about this issue before the release of our report because the consensus was so striking. Even where stakeholders disagreed about what the court still needs to improve or what problems the court is facing, everyone felt that removing the help desk from the parentage court would exacerbate the difficulties that pro se litigants, private attorneys, and the court itself encounter daily in the practice.
Stakeholders felt strongly that the immediate access provided by the help desk minimized disruptions in the court call when pro se litigants had simple questions which could be quickly resolved. The convenient location of the help desk also minimizes disruptions which occur when litigants fail to return to the courtroom quickly because they can easily be found at the help desk while it is in the waiting room.
Stakeholders noted that with the current location, help desk attorneys have immediate easy access to casefiles for drafting documents which they would lose if they were no longer placed near the courtrooms.
Practitioners felt removing the help desk to a centralized location would degrade the limited privacy currently available to persons using the help desk.
Finally, many people expressed concerns that pro se litigants would be confused by the move. Some felt that removing the desk from the parentage court lobby would signal to pro se litigants that it was not an available resource to them. Others felt the litigants would miss their cases being called and would not be easy to find if the help desk was not in the lobby. Practitioners noted that there is already a problem when litigants are expected to move from the hearing rooms to the courtrooms in that they do not always make it from one room to the next. Moving the help desk outside the security station for the parentage court would likely deter some litigants from using it and may keep some from re-entering the parentage court after leaving security to access the help desk.
Having the help desk in the waiting room connects its resources to the parentage court in a meaningful way. It provides continuity for pro se litigants and improves access to justice. Moving the help desk from the waiting room and outside the security checkpoint would disrupt the services it provides and impeded the flow of cases through the courtrooms.