Otto Bremer Foundation Grant Project

Wisconsin Judicare, Inc. is a non-profit law firm dedicated to equal access to justice for northern Wisconsin’s residents. Located in downtown Wausau’s Historic Washington Square, Wisconsin Judicare, Inc. acts as the civil legal service provider for Wisconsin’s northern thirty-three counties and eleven federally recognized Indian tribes.

In 2004, Wisconsin Judicare, Inc. submitted an ambitious proposal to the Otto Bremer Foundation, and was awarded with a $ 150,000 grant for the 10th Judicial District Access to Justice Project. The Bremer Foundation based in St. Paul, Minnesota, funds projects that promote economic and social justice with a focus on Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. The grant funds a two-year project to develop and implement a plan for improving access to the courts for self represented individuals in northwestern Wisconsin. The project, a continuation of the five-year work of the 10th Judicial District Self-Help Initiative, is designed to promote collaboration with community groups, organizations and the court system.

Attorney Robert Hagness of Mondovi, Wisconsin, is the coordinator of this project. He is currently gathering information from state and tribal judges, family court commissioners, judicial assistants, clerks of court, registers in probate and court staff throughout the District in Phase One of the project.

The Key Objectives of this Project:

• Collaborate with community groups and organizations, libraries, attorneys, tribal court leaders, circuit court officials and others to fully implement and promote usage of model forms and instructions for divorce and other family cases. These materials would be available to litigants, the general public and anyone else who might benefit from their use;
  
• Develop standardized rules and procedures to improve the ease of court access for self-represented litigants;
  
• Provide direct assistance and training to judges, family court commissioners, clerks of court and court staff to help them meet the challenges of self-represented litigation;
  
• Develop and implement a major public outreach effort to inform citizens of program services and available resources, which would entail a multi-faceted approach;
  
• Research funding possibilities for production of a public outreach video;
  
• Provide direct assistance and training to judges, family court commissioners, clerks of court and court staff to help them meet the challenges of self-represented litigation;
  
• Develop portions of the Wisconsin Judicare website to help self-represented citizens who do not have assistance of legal council. This would include updating or adding links from other websites such as the State Bar of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Court System;
  and
  
• Establish a methodology for replicating this Access to Justice initiative in the other 20 counties of the Wisconsin Judicare Service Area.