Access to Justice is Less About Access and More About Burden

“Why do I need four copies?” Victor asked. 

I had been talking to Victor for about 15 minutes, trying to understand his experience navigating eviction court forms. I’d just asked him to review an answer form and filing instructions. He paused on step three of a six-step process, which required him to make four copies of the answer form and keep one copy for his records. I stayed silent to see what he’d do next. “I’m going to lose all of them,” Victor said. “It’s just too much paper… I’m going to verbally say my thing, doesn’t make sense to write it.”

Victor was part of a user-research study I was conducting at the University of Michigan School of Information examining how members of the public navigate eviction court forms without legal help. He is also an example of the overwhelming administrative burdens that people face when representing themselves in the legal system. 

The issue of self-representation has grown in recent decades in civil court cases including housing, debt collection, and family law. The court system was designed assuming that both parties are represented by a lawyer, but today at least one litigant is self-represented in 75% of civil cases. This places increasing demands on court staff, causes delays in court proceedings, and creates dilemmas for judges responsible for ensuring fair treatment in an adversarial system. 

Beyond issues of court capacity, a key concern is access to justice for those who represent themselves. This is of greater concern in cases where one party is represented by an attorney and another is not, which creates information asymmetries that are difficult to overcome. In recent years, state court offices have worked towards addressing these information asymmetries and improving access for self-represented litigants by expanding self-help tools and increasing use of technology; more recently exploring the use of AI in courts and online tools.

However, as I watched Victor interact with the forms in front of him, I wondered how these access interventions would address his difficulties with the six-step filing process. At step three, Victor clearly understood what he needed to do, but felt an overwhelming sense of defeat when trying to do it. The remaining steps to filing included calling the court to figure out how to file the form, mailing a copy to the landlord or their lawyer, filling out a statement of mailing, and taking or mailing the original form to the court. 

It seemed like what Victor really needed to access justice was a copy machine, transportation, a telephone, some envelopes, and an entire day to do administrative tasks. Perhaps this was something a self-help center could assist with. However, finding one seemed like a barrier in itself. During our conversation Victor pointed out, “if they don’t say it here [on the form], I would not know where to do it because I haven’t had to do it before.” Perhaps what the court needed to address was less about access to information or technology, and more about burden. 

Over the past 15 years, research based in public policy and administration has expanded our understanding of how administrative burdens shape people’s ability to access public programs. Researchers have identified three core claims of administrative burden. First, they are consequential—they impact people's lives through direct and indirect costs and influence how people perceive bureaucratic systems. Second, they are distributive—disproportionately affecting people with fewer resources, which reinforces inequalities. And third, they are constructed—arising from design decisions in how laws and procedures are implemented. 

Research has shown that even small burdens can create outsized effects. One study on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) found that reducing the time period beneficiaries had to complete a required interview led to a 22% drop in recertifications. In another study, health insurance enrollment dropped by 33% when an auto-enrollment policy was eliminated, requiring recipients to proactively select a plan. Even these small burdens in administrative tasks led to decreased engagement, resulting in loss of money for food and healthcare coverage. If burdens this small made such an impact, it was no wonder that Victor thought to opt out of participating in the six steps it took to file an answer form in court. 

Through years of measured interventions, administrative burden researchers have identified several strategies to reduce burdens: simplify processes, increase flexibility, utilize auto-enrollment or defaults that favor benefit recipients, and shift burdens to the state through use of third-party navigators, pre-filled forms, and existing administrative data. In social safety net programs, these strategies have shown to increase benefit engagement, participation, and retention. 

As courts continue their efforts to improve access to justice, they should consider leaning on two complementary bodies of knowledge: administrative burden research, which identifies costs that systems impose on the people they serve, and user-experience research, which reveals how those costs are experienced in practice. The challenges facing self-represented litigants are well documented, but understanding why requires sitting with people like Victor, watching where they pause in the process, and taking seriously what they reveal. 

Within the court system, when complex processes are difficult to understand, burdensome to comply with, and psychologically taxing to navigate, this amounts to a quiet failure of the promise of justice. Addressing these challenges requires more than information or technology alone. As the administrative burden literature shows, it requires a genuine commitment to changing the underlying processes that people like Victor routinely encounter. Victor didn't need more information on the six-step process. He needed fewer steps. IAALS' Uncomplicated Courts Initiative is an inspiring example of this kind of commitment—a collaborative approach to court reform that recognizes process simplification as the primary driver of access to justice.