In 2002, the Judicial Council of California, Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) introduced the Model Self-Help Center Pilot Program, a project aimed at enhancing and assessing the effectiveness of court-based self-help programs. The program provides funding for five model pilot centers that will be used as a model for developing similar programs across the State of California. The five models include: 1) a regional model to explore how larger counties can share resources effectively with nearby smaller counties; 2) an urban collaboration model that seeks to coordinate self-help centers in a large jurisdiction; 3) a technology model that will utilize and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of technology to provide services; 4) a Spanish speaking model to provide services for a primarily Spanish speaking population; and a multilingual model to provide services to litigants who speak a wide variety of languages. The Model Self-Help Pilot Program presents a unique evaluation opportunity, one in which a variety of pilot program approaches are pursued to achieve a single overarching objective: improving the experiences and outcomes of self-represented litigants in the California court system.

BPA, and its partner NPC Research, are conducting the evaluations of each of the five pilot programs chosen for the Model Self-Help Center Pilot Program. The purpose of this evaluation is to document the effectiveness of the five models and aid the AOC in informing the California state legislature about this initiative. Our research design will describe the process of implementation of specific interventions in the five pilot programs and capture their effects, as well as produce larger lessons about the difference self-help centers make in the legal experiences of a variety of self-represented litigants. The evaluation consists of several components: site visits to the five programs, interviews with center users, courtroom observation, interviews with self-represented litigants, court file reviews, and intake and service tracking data collected from the centers.