I’m a data geek. I love poring over data and running analyses to see what story unfolds. On the national level, data can tell us the story of our rise as an industrial power and how that changed how people lived and worked. On a local level, it can tell the story of how the closing of a factory affects the fabric of a community and the institutions that bind it. For foreclosure mediation programs, the data can tell the story of how homeowners are affected by changes to the program. Thus, I was eager to find out how changes to the court rules in the 19th Judicial Circuit of Illinois at the beginning of this year would play out. What story would the data tell? (more…)
Archive for the ‘Foreclosure Mediation’ Category
Designing Access Part Three: Transitions, Continuity and Communication
Just Court ADR, August 19th, 2016Welcome to the final blog post in a series showcasing how RSI uses our expertise in dispute system design to improve access to justice in the three foreclosure mediation programs we administer. If you’re wondering how this series came to be, check out my introduction to the series, as well as the posts highlighting our work in the 19th and 17th Judicial Circuits of Illinois.
This last post will look a little bit different than I anticipated, in large part because it will also be my final post as RSI’s Director of ADR Programs before I take on a new position as Counsel for Innovation and Technology at the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois. In my upcoming role, I will continue to work to promote access to justice, this time focusing on using technology and process improvement in the legal aid context. As you might imagine, transitions and continuity have been on my mind quite a lot, especially because of how close RSI’s programs are to my heart and how passionately I feel about their ongoing success.
At RSI, we think carefully about transitions and work hard to promote continuity during times of change. Current Resource Center Director Eric Slepak will begin his tenure as Director of ADR Programs after I leave today, and the two of us have been working closely together over the past two months to minimize the impact of this transition on our programs. RSI is lucky to have Eric, and I know the programs at RSI will be in great hands.
Lessons Learned from Foreclosure Mediation
Susan M. Yates, June 14th, 2016It is heartening to see that titles of two recent publications include the phrase “lessons learned” as they explore Illinois’ experience with foreclosure mediation. That phrase reflects Resolution Systems Institute’s perspective that we should consistently seek the lessons from current mediation programs to apply to the next ones to be developed. Not surprisingly, RSI staff wrote one of these articles!
These pieces – the one by RSI and the other by the Woodstock Institute – outline four and twelve “lessons learned” respectively. The publications are:
- “Promoting Access to Justice: Applying Lessons Learned from Foreclosure Mediation,” written by RSI’s own Director of Research, Jennifer Shack, and Director of ADR Programs, Hanna Kaufman. It appears in the Spring 2016 edition of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section’s Dispute Resolution Magazine
- “Lessons Learned from the Circuit Court of Cook County Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation Program,” a study by Spencer M. Cowan, Senior Vice President of the Woodstock Institute. It was published by the Woodstock Institute on May 18, 2016.
Designing Access Part Two: “Dynamic Triage” in RSI’s Foreclosure Mediation Program in Rockford, Illinois
Just Court ADR, March 15th, 2016Welcome back to my series of blog posts showcasing how RSI uses our expertise in dispute system design to improve access to justice in the three foreclosure mediation programs we administer. If you’re wondering how this series came to be, check out my introduction to the series. In my previous entry, I discussed how we at RSI leveraged the data we collected to improve participation in our foreclosure mediation program in the 19th Circuit Court of Lake County, Illinois. By looking at “apples-to-apples” comparison of data among six programs in Illinois, we saw participation went up when judges referred people to the program, and when we only required people to complete a phone screening rather than an in-person information session. The 19th Circuit made these changes, and while it has only been a couple of months since that happened, we are already starting to see more people being able to access the program.
Building off that previous discussion about using data to drive program improvements, my focus in this entry is a different tool in the program administration toolbox: thoughtful, dynamic triage. (more…)
