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70 Vand. L. Rev. 1993 (2017)
Improving Access to Justice in State Courts with Platform Technology

handle is hein.journals/vanlr70 and id is 2056 raw text is: Improving Access to Justice in State Courts with Platform Technology J.J. Prescott* Access to justice often equates to access to state courts, and for millions of Americans, using state courts to resolve their disputes-often with the government-is a real challenge. Reforms are regularly proposed in the hopes of improving the situation (e.g., better legal aid), but until recently a significant part of the problem has been structural. Using state courts today for all but the simplest of legal transactions entails at the very least traveling to a courthouse and meeting with a decisionmaker in person and in a one-on-one setting. Even minimally effective access, therefore, requires time, transportation, and very often the financial wherewithal to miss work or to pay for child care. In this Article, I investigate the effects of altering this structural baseline by studying the consequences of introducing online platform technology to improve citizen access to justice. In courts that adopt the technology, citizens are able to communicate with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges to seek relief or negotiate a resolution through an online portal at any time of day. Examining many months of data from half a dozen adopting state courts, Ipresent evidence that introducing this technology dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes for citizens to resolve their disputes and satisfy any fines or fees they owe. Default rates also plummet, and court personnel, including judges, appear to engage constructively with citizens when using the platform. From the perspective of state courts, disputes end more quickly, the percentage of * Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. I am very grateful to the Third Century Global Initiatives Grant Program at the University of Michigan for funding the UM Online Court Project, of which this research is a part; the staff at Court Innovations Inc. for sharing their data, expertise, and time; Max Bulinski and Kyle Rozema for their comments; and Facundo Bouzat, Grady Bridges, Troy Epstein, Joseph Gallmeyer, Jesse Hogin, Simmon Kim, M Moore, Marissa Perry, Joseph Piligian, and Andr6 Rouillard for excellent research assistance on work related to this Article. Conflict disclosure: I am a cofounder and equity holder of Court Innovations Inc., a University of Michigan startup that develops and implements online case resolution systems, including Matterhorn, which is evaluated in this Article. 1993

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