In Anchorage,
Alaska, an Early Resolution Program for family cases has reduced time to
resolution, reduced staff time spent on cases and had no impact on the number
of post-disposition motions to modify, according to a recently completed
evaluation. The program includes triage, dispute resolution and attorney
assistance with documents. Stacey Marz reports on her study in, “Faster and as
Satisfying: An Evaluation of Alaska’s Early Resolution Triage Program” (Family
Court Review, 2019).
In the Early
Resolution Program (ERP), cases involving two self-represented litigants are
reviewed by a staff attorney to determine if they are appropriate for the
program. The staff attorney generally screens out cases involving: current or
serious domestic violence incidents; issues that require evidentiary findings;
a pending child abuse or neglect case; or a non-parent who is asserting a
custodial claim.
If a case is
appropriate, the parties are notified of the opportunity to participate. If
they agree to do so, they are either provided two unbundled lawyers who work
collaboratively (and only on dispute resolution), a court mediator or a
settlement judge to help them resolve the case. If the parties reach agreement,
they go to court to finalize their divorce approximately three weeks after
entering the program. There, a staff attorney completes the final documents,
including the findings of fact and conclusions of law, parenting plan, divorce
decree, and child support order. The judge reviews and signs all the documents,
which are then copied and distributed in the courtroom. The judge then grants
the divorce and the parties leave with all the documents.
For the
evaluation, Marz looked at 299 ERP cases from 2011 to 2013 that resolved
through settlement and compared them to a control group of 392 cases closed
before the ERP was implemented. These cases followed a traditional court track
involving an initial status conference, a pre-trial conference and a trial or
settlement conference. For the study, the pre-ERP cases were screened the same
way as cases filed after the implementation of the ERP in order to make them
comparable.
Marz found a high
rate of resolution for ERP participants, with 80% reaching agreement in a
three-hour dispute resolution session. In addition, ERP cases were able to
close more quickly. The time from filing to closure for ERP cases was a median
of 42 days as compared to a median of 104 for cases in the control group.
As a proxy for
party satisfaction with the process, Marz also looked at the number of motions
filed per case to modify the judgment. The assumption is that parties file
motions to modify soon after the final judgment if they are unhappy with the
outcome. She found no significant difference between the two groups: for the
ERP group,.18 motions were filed per case within two years of disposition,
compared to .22 motions per case for the control group. According to Marz, this
indicates that concerns that the ERP process was too quick and parties didn’t
have enough time to think about the issues were not supported.
The last item Marz
examined was the number of processing steps staff undertook for each case. For
cases undergoing ERP, there are 28 to 30 processing steps, taking a total of
240 minutes (4 hours). The number of steps for the average non-ERP case is 49,
taking a total of 1,047 minutes (17.45 hours). Marz notes that the reason for
this increased efficiency is two-fold: First, once the staff attorney screens
and accepts a case into ERP, the file stays with the attorney, eliminating many
case-processing steps that occur in typical cases. Second, there are great
efficiencies in scheduling multiple cases during the same ERP hearing block,
especially when most cases resolve in one court event.
The evaluation
indicates that the Early Resolution Program in Anchorage has increased efficiency
in cases involving self-represented litigants without inducing parties to enter
into agreements that aren’t sustainable.
