By Eric Kleiman

TOUCH-SCREEN JUSTICE
With no end in sight to the resource crisis preventing millions of Americans from having their rightful day in court, Legal Aid Society of Orange County turns to a ground-breaking experiment with computer self-help terminals that just may revolutionize access to the civil justice system.

A fist, a phone call, and a flight of panic brought a frightened Anaheim, Calif., mother eyeball to eyeball with the future of the American civil justice system on a Tuesday afternoon last fall in Orange County. 

Less than 48 hours earlier, Mercedes Mejia Casas’ three-year “marriage” of escalating cruelty had exploded in a final fit of violence. But as the elevator lifted her to the seventh floor of the Lamoreaux Justice Center, she felt a liberating resolve. Never again would she be hurt by the conning bigamist who had won her hand on an avalanche of lies. 

When Lorenzo courted Mercedes in 1998, he sat down her whole family and pledged to clean up his act. No more booze, no more drugs. He would be a good husband, a good father, and a good provider. Mercedes wanted to believe him, so she did, and they were married. But by the time she became pregnant in the winter of 2000, Lorenzo was ditching his landscaping job to go out drinking and would come home acting increasingly “aggressive and negative,” Mercedes says. 

That’s when the telephone call came from a woman in Mexico City, phoning to tell Lorenzo that she had met another man and wanted a divorce. Mercedes' marriage, it turned out, was a sham. Not long after that discovery, Mercedes gave birth to Evelyn Lorena, at which time Lorenzo’s drunken hostility became full-scale abuse. A crushing right fist to Mercedes' cheek two nights earlier had finally crystallized her decision: escape now or risk the baby’s safety and  her own. So she picked up the phone, dialed 911, and told them to hurry. When the police arrived, the signs of domestic violence were obvious enough, as was Lorenzo's condition. The officers asked if he had been drinking; he said no. They asked his name; he made one up. They asked if he was a legal resident; “of course,” he lied again. “I told the officers he was playing with their minds,” Mercedes says, “just like he did with my mind when I met him."

Lorenzo was taken to jail, but what would happen when he was released? Mercedes, who also has a 15-year-old son, was not eager to find out. She called her therapist for advice and got some: File a restraining order now. Protect yourself and your children.

“WELCOME TO I-CAN, the pleasant female voice intones, steady and reassuring. “I-CAN will help you with understanding which court forms you need to use, filing out forms you may need, knowing where and how to file your court forms, and preparing your case once your forms have been filed…”

A talking head inside the computer is talking to Mercedes Mejia Casas. This she could’ve hardly expected upon arriving at Lamoreaux in Orange, Calif., just before lunchtime. She figured she would fill out some paperwork, maybe speak with an officer of the court about her trouble at home. But instead, a court-employed facilitator has asked her to take a seat at the helm of a computer cubicle that resembles a communications port from a Buck Rogers movie. 

A computing novice with only rudimentary keyboarding skills, Casas pulled up her chair with some trepidation. But within moments, the soothing female “tutor” in the upper corner of her monitor has calmed her nerves. Step by step, Casas is guided through an easy-to-follow domestic violence questionnaire. After a few simple touches of the screen, Casas arises from her wood-paneled kiosk armed with the paperwork she needs to obtain an emergency protective order against Lorenzo. “Everything’s new for me, but anyone can use this,” Casas says right before dropping off her completed forms with the court clerk inside the building. “It was very helpful and very easy.”

Two days later, a judge issues a temporary restraining order instructing Lorenzo to stay away from Mercedes. Lorenzo is served the order while in jail, and it’s a good thing, too. Eight days after his arrest on assault and battery charges, Lorenzo is released. But seeing as he is not eager for a return trip to lockup, and the deportation to Mexico that could accompany it, Lorenzo has since kept his distance. That’s welcome news for Mercedes and her family, who now feel safe again. 

Mercedes’ sudden, successful plunge into cyberspace mirrors the experience of thousands of other low-income Orange County residents who have received a measure of justice thanks to the Interactive Assistance Community Network (I-CAN), a ground-breaking, touch-screen system designed to provide access to civil justice to those who cannot afford legal representation. The legal self-help terminals are not a Bill Gates production, or the work of some slick new firm with a Silicon Valley zip code. The nascent technology is being pioneered by a group of unlikely hi-tech visionaries – a band of committed public advocates working at the Legal Aid Society of Orange County (LASOC) under the leadership of Executive Director Bob Cohen. Since the launch of the first kiosk in November 2000, I-CAN has helped more than 6,000 Orange County residents secure assistance with a range of legal matters, including domestic violence restraining orders, child support cases, eviction defense, paternity petitions, and small claims.

I-CAN has come a long way since Orange County Superior Court Judge John Wooley was fortuitously channel-flipping in a Phoenix hotel and stumbled upon a cable station promoting legal self-help terminals run by the local court system. When Wooley returned home, he searched for a colleague in the legal community to share his excitement over the new technology. In the summer of 1999, he found such a person in Cohen, whose reaction to the terminals was, essentially, eureka!

“For years, the mantra at legal aid has been, ‘We can only help one in five.’ Eighty percent of our client community goes without help because of a lack of resources,” Cohen says. “Well, we’re always saying that. My response is, ‘How about creating a system that can actually start helping that 80 percent?’ ”

Over the last two years, Legal Services Corporation has anted up a total of $450,000 for the I-CAN pilot, with the federal investment making up almost half of the approximately $1 million spent so far. Nine kiosks and two terminals have sprung up at courthouses, libraries, district attorney offices, and women’s shelters in Fullerton, Irvine, Orange, Santa Ana, and San Juan Capistrano. By the end of June, seventeen more kiosks will be up and running in San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, Sacramento, and South L.A. counties as part of the biggest I-CAN expansion yet. “If one organization gets a kiosk,” I-CAN Project Manager A.J. Tavares says, “there’s usually kiosk-envy from other organizations in the area who want their own.”

I-CAN was designed with the computer illiterate in mind. The interface is written at a fifth-grade level, so users don’t need a juris doctorate from Cornell to debunk arcane legalisms and enforce their basic legal rights. I-CAN basically interviews users in layman’s language, offering multiple-choice questions to minimize the amount of information a client must type. And I-CAN is multilingual, meaning the interview may be conducted in English, Spanish, or Vietnamese, but the pleadings always are printed in English as required by law.

I-CAN also offers users a complete primer on where to go and how to get there, with a video court tour that provides detailed directions to Orange County’s five courthouses, the various kiosks, and the appropriate court clerks. I-CAN even has a mock trial video so litigants know what to expect when appearing before a judge. “Our clients always viewed the law as too complex to deal with themselves, but for the first time, this technology is taking them to a place where they can have their day in court,” Cohen says. “They may not win, but at least they get access to justice – a fair hearing, a judge who knows what they want. Many of them have never had that before.”

An independent research project completed in January by the University of California at Irvine showed that clients reported very positive results after using I-CAN. Ninety-eight percent of respondents who rated I-CAN’s level of difficulty called it “very easy” or “easy,” while 98 percent of respondents also called their session “very helpful or helpful.” Of the 46 users who participated in in-depth interviews, 45 said they would recommend I-CAN to others.

I-CAN has been received just as warmly by judges weary of plodding through thick backlogs of pro se cases between ill-prepared litigants whose pleadings can resemble chicken scratch. Judges are raving to Cohen about how I-CAN has made their courtrooms run more smoothly. Meanwhile, low-income individuals once put off by the high costs of obtaining legal representation or the daunting prospect of representing themselves pro se, are now finally being heard.

“The frustration level is the same,” Cohen says. “On the one side, you have a client who wants assistance, feels the court is too complex, and is alienated from the whole process. On the other side, you have judges dedicated to making justice happen, but [who] can’t because they can’t step out of their neutral role to determine what the parties are actually seeking. All that confusion is gone now. One judge confided to me that litigants in his courtroom with pleadings prepared by I-CAN stand a far better chance of obtaining the relief they seek.”

Orange County is a not a good place to put down roots if you’re a deadbeat dad. Jan Sturla – the earnest, firm senior assistant district attorney who heads up the D.A.’s Family Support Division – sees to that. Every time a single mother in Orange County signs up for public assistance, Sturla’s office receives word and immediately sets out to identify and locate the child’s father to determine if he’s paying the child support he owes under California law. If not, much unpleasantness can befall him: suspension of his driver’s license, garnished wages, even a warrant issued for his arrest.

Child support cases, however, are often a bit more tricky than deadbeat dad vs. dependent mom. Sometimes, fathers trying to do the right thing are simply overcharged. In California, child support obligations are determined by a complicated legislative formula that, for a single child, equates to roughly 25 percent of the non-custodial parent’s monthly income. If the spouse’s income information is not available, an amount is statutorily set – often too high. 

In such instances, the parent must file an “order to show cause” (“OSC”) to have the child support order modified. More than 1,100 OSCs are filed every month in Orange County. Before I-CAN, filing an OSC often required a lawyer’s help, making it cost-prohibitive for many low-income earners to pursue. As a result, some parents lost faith in the system and gave up.

“Those who feel shut out at the court level often times don’t exercise their visitation rights and don’t pay child support,” Sturla notes. “The I-CAN system makes it easier for parents to stay involved. That’s really the big societal gain we get – keeping both parents involved in a child’s life is good for everybody.”

Edgar Garcia is exactly the kind of father that the I-CAN system aims to help. He has remained a doting Dad to his 1-year-old, Emily, since splitting with her mother seven months after her birth. Today, Garcia has come to Lamoreaux with his child support order in one hand and his most recent pay stub in the other. He has been ordered to pay his ex $365 a month in child support, which comes to more than half of his total monthly wages. “Somebody thinks I make a lot of money,” cracks Garcia, shaking his head in disbelief. “They say I make more, but, look, I make less. I want to pay child support, but I have bills, rent, and food to buy. I think this is too much.”

I-CAN empowers Garcia to help himself. With a few pushes of the touch-screen, he completes an OSC with his actual income information, and a judge later knocks down his payments to a level on par with his wages. Sturla is pleased to see justice done and talks excitedly of a day when I-CAN will be available to an even wider subset of litigants. “I think you will eventually see this as a standard resource on the Web,” he says. “Go to a Home Depot on a Saturday morning. The people there aren’t plumbers and painters and tile-setters. They’re all homeowners who’ve decided to do it themselves. People are treating the law like that now.”

Cohen, too, would like to see I-CAN available via the Internet and hopes to begin that effort in the next year. He and his LASOC staff are planning several other innovations as well. Video conferencing, already offered at one kiosk location, will allow clients to chat face-to-face with an advocate over the computer and scan and fax documents to LASOC’s Help Center for review. E-filing of domestic violence restraining orders also will be launched later this year. Parking ticket collection could even be handled by I-CAN down the road.

Today, though, the big news at LASOC’s modest, red-brick office in Santa Ana is the Administrative Office of the Courts’ invitation to submit a statewide grant application to expand I-CAN to more than 300 courthouses across California. Cohen is still in negotiations with court leaders on the details of the expansion. He is clearly optimistic about the prospects. After California is blanketed, Cohen dreams of seeing the system go national. Toward that end, LASOC is offering the I-CAN template for free to any court system that would like to use it. Cohen has already received calls from officials in Maryland, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Many others, he surmises, will be calling once they get a look at I-CAN themselves.

“There was a lot of skepticism about I-CAN originally,” Cohen recalls. “When we first approached people, they told us, ‘You can’t use this to help our clients. Our clients have bandages on their fingers.’ What we’ve learned is that it’s very hard to tell people about I-CAN. It’s only after they see the technology with their own eyes that they become believers. And you know what? If you go to the Family Law Center at Lamoreaux, you will see people with bandages on their fingers using I-CAN every day.”