Use existing community legal resources to staff the multi-door courthouse. Make plain-English information about how to navigate in the court available to the public. All court procedures can be explained in plain English. Nolo Press, other self-help law publishers and the Maricopa County Superior Court have proven that this is so. But the courts should then follow the lead of the Maricopa County Superior Court and make plain-English guides available to all.
Unleash court clerks.
Clerks should be free to provide the same information to the self-represented as they do to lawyers and their staffs. If clerks were retrained and instructed that their responsibilities included helping non-lawyers and dispensing procedural information, one large barrier to access would disappear. Make courthouse law libraries user-friendly. Like court clerks, law librarians are often afraid to answer even simple questions from non-lawyers. Librarians, like the court clerks, should be encouraged to help non-lawyers, and should be reassured that doing so doesn't constitute practicing law without a license.