Court forms should be designed with self-represented litigants in mind, researchers at the University of Ottawa said in a recent report, which implores judicial stakeholders to consider introducing guided pathways on digital forms and to massage legal jargon into easily understood, plain-language instructions.

Studying prior research performed by the Community Legal Education Ontario, the report identifies overly complex court forms as a barrier to justice, particularly in family law, where 50% to 80% of parties in Canada are self-represented, according to the researchers.

The report, titled "Court Form Accessibility: Adopting, Designing, and Evaluating Online Guided Pathways," was authored by University of Ottawa professors and graduates Amy Salyzyn, Jacquelyn Burkell, David Westcott and Esti Azizi in June and published to the Social Science Research Network on Monday.

Two strategies are identified in alleviating hiccups faced by self-represented litigants in family law: offering guided instructions through forms and translating instructions using "functional literacy."

The researchers define guided pathways as instructions "tailor-made for persons navigating the court system without direct help from legal experts." According to the report, additional explanations can be provided "on demand" on digital forms, while showing users only parts that must be filled out by them to cut through irrelevant text and improve user experience.

Another example of guided pathways involves a publicly available application that asks users a series of questions and then populates relevant court forms.

"We observed that guided pathways can significantly, albeit not completely, reduce complexity for self-represented litigants, and thus, other jurisdictions should consider adopting them as access-enhancing measures," the report said.

Functional literacy, meanwhile, is defined by the researchers as language intended less on evaluating reading level and more on imparting information to help a person complete tasks. On court forms, for example, requests for an "address" could refer to the litigant's address, the opposing party's, or the court itself, muddying the intention of the question.

"This very simple example helps to show why readability alone is not a complete measure of court form accessibility," the report said.

How a question is asked can also impede the form process. The researchers noted that in a 2019 study on a fillable PDF version of a common family law form, while the majority of users managed to successfully complete the form, instances where litigants were tasked with offering an open-ended explanation to a question caused some difficulty.

"We found that when designing and evaluating the design of court form guided pathways, a functional literacy framework, combined with user data and human testing, can be helpful in identifying barriers that self-represented litigants might experience," the paper said.

Sanding down the idiosyncrasies of court filing formats and systems has been identified by entities such as Stanford Law School as a means of addressing access to justice issues. Its Filing Fairness Project in December launched an interactive toolkit designed for use by state courts to standardize court filing systems and open the door for legal technologies to more easily embed themselves across jurisdictions.

Some jurisdictions offer technology and resources to help people, especially litigants representing themselves, navigate the justice system. But small differences in legal forms — such as whether they're asking for a "surname" or a "last name" — inhibit tech companies from scaling tools for nationwide or even statewide use.

Other groups, such as the National Center for State Courts, have a vision similar to Stanford's for establishing shared standards between different jurisdictions. Focusing on expanding the use of data across state courts by the people they serve, the NCSC has launched a project aiming to standardize data elements and definitions to better capture and share data insights.

--Editing by Nicole Bleier.