Courts and Customers: What Do Court Users Have to Tell Us?

September 20th Court Leader’s Advantage Podcast Episode Obtaining customer feedback, obtaining usable feedback, obtaining enough of it to be able to rationally modify court programs, all of these are major hurdles. And yet getting good customer feedback is so important. It is important to complete the loop: to plan, to act, to check results, and then to refine. And this effort has been made even more complicated by COVID. LaGratta Consulting, with the backing of the State Justice Institute, has developed the Court Voices Project piloting 12 courts from around the country. These courts are collecting real-time, feedback from staff and court users about their pandemic experiences and their ideas. Some of the questions the Court Voices Project is trying to answer include, what percentage of court users prefer virtual hearings and why; have court users found new communication channels like phone banks and online chat features to be more convenient and more accessible; and what ideas do line-staff have for improving court practices? This month we’re looking at court customers and how we collect feedback from them. Some topics we will explore include: · How do we obtain more and better customer feedback? · Why should court leaders focus on better ways to obtain feedback? · What have courts been able to do with more enhanced feedback? and · What advice do these panelists have for the rest of us? Today’s Panel The Honorable Clemens Landau, Judge with the Justice Court in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Judge Landau was appointed to the Salt Lake City Justice Court in 2017. He received his law degree from the University of Utah in 2008. The Honorable Timothy Kuhlman, Judge with the Municipal Court in Toledo, Ohio.  In February 2005 he joined the Toledo Municipal Court and served as Presiding and Administrative Judge from 2007 through 2010, and again in 2019-2021.  Judge Kuhlman graduated from Hillsdale College in Michigan in 1988 and graduated from the University of Toledo Law School and joined the Ohio Bar in 1991. James Cho, Court Administrator for the Municipal Court in Boulder, Colorado. James was first named Court Administrator in June 2015.  Before that he served as Deputy Administrator since 2006.  De'Von Kissick-Kelly, Deputy Court Administrator for the Municipal Court, in Boulder.  De'Von has devoted her career to empowering women through activism, advocacy and education. She holds a B.S in Criminal Justice and Criminology and a M.A. in Adult and Community Education from Ball State University Emily LaGratta is with La Gratta Consulting.  Emily is a national subject matter expert on the topics of procedural justice and user voice. In leading LaGratta Consulting, she works with local and national organizations to design and implement innovative programming, engage end-users and utilize their feedback, and develop practitioner resources and training tools that help enhance public trust and confidence in legal institutions.