Texas counties rally against statewide court records portal
Nathan Hecht, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, has noticed a curious trend in the state’s legal system: Folks are increasingly representing themselves in legal disputes, forgoing lawyers altogether.
“They really need legal help, but they don’t feel like they can afford it,” Hecht said.
But ditching a lawyer doesn’t make justice free. Obtaining legal records can be a big hurdle — time away from work, trips to a courthouse that may be far from home and copying fees that can run a dollar per page for documents that often run hundreds of pages.
“We’re talking about tens of thousands of people for whom getting a court record is probably impossible, at least practically,” said Hecht, who has long sought to help poor Texans navigate the legal system.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/03/09/seeing-turf-war-texas-counties-rally-against-statewide-records-portal/