Page 26 - Delaware Lawyer -Spring 2021

FEATURE | MEETING PATRONS’ CHANGING NEEDS
To better serve the needs of pro se patrons, the libraries needed to develop a more comprehensive collection of plain-language legal texts designed for non-practitioners.
perienced by low-income people is ad- dressed with the assistance of” an at- torney, and national studies have found that across the country “approximately 80% of the legal needs of low-income people go unmet.”6 Furthermore, “based on the 2016 Rule of Law Index, the United States ranked 94th out of 113 [countries] with regard to access to civil justice.”7
The Commission’s Pro Se Subcom- mittee recommended that the Judicial Law Libraries expand their services to include self-help resources. Initially, the bulk of the library’s collection was geared towards practitioners, not lay- people. To better serve the needs of pro se patrons, the libraries needed to develop a more comprehensive collec- tion of plain-language legal texts de- signed for non-practitioners as well as an up-to-date print collection of court forms. To determine what areas of legal research would be most needed for our patrons, the librarians consulted the Pro Se Subcommittee’s Exhibits of the Access to Justice Commission’s report. These exhibits included a survey that asked each of the courts for their most common pro se claim types and their most demanded resources.
Based on this research, we pur- chased a collection of 81 self-help law books and assembled print versions of the most commonly requested court forms and self-help guides. While these guides had already been developed by the courts and made available on the courts’ website, the libraries became a space where less tech-savvy patrons could come and look at print versions of these documents.
Finally, as many of our patrons have pressing needs that are not necessar- ily legal needs, the Law Libraries also include a collection of community and human services resources. The Community Court Resource Center, housed in the same suite as the Judicial Law Library in New Castle County, has
The Future: Expanding Remote Services
The law libraries have had an Ask a Law Librarian Service, which provides remote assistance to the general pub- lic, for a number of years.5 The vast majority of our Ask a Law Librarian patrons are pro se litigants, but we are happy to answer the questions of prac- titioners through this service as well and do field a couple of questions from lawyers (mostly from out of state) and students/academics each month. In the early months of the pandemic, the total number of questions we received jumped from our typical 35–40 per month to nearly 70. Many of these new questions were questions about how court procedures had changed due to the pandemic. This service allowed us to help the public to navigate questions about an evolving response to the pan- demic, and to direct the public to legal information resources while they could not come into the libraries to do their research (or felt unsafe doing so).
We encourage the public, practitio- ners and court staff to use our remote
New Castle County Law Library
services whenever possible, and plan to keep and expand remote assistance as part of our core services moving forward. If a patron is aware of a specific section of the code, or a specific case they are look- ing for, we are able to scan and email it to them, saving them a trip and, in the time of COVID, keeping everyone safe. Even with fewer patrons coming into the library space over the past year, we have still been able to help practitioners and the public access legal information.
Further Expanding Pro Se Services
The three County Law Libraries in Delaware have always offered some degree of services to pro se litigants, but findings from the Access to Jus- tice Commission have helped focus those efforts. While the law librarians are not able to offer legal advice to our patrons, we try to fill the role of legal concierge by helping our patrons find the resources they need to address their legal concerns.
According to the 2017 Delaware Access to Justice Commission Report, “Less than 1-in-5 legal problems ex-
24 DELAWARE LAWYER SPRING 2021