With eroding public confidence in courts it is natural for court leaders to among other things try to make appearing in court easier. Hence there are advocates of expanding the use of remote hearings. But what if there are “hidden costs” to the use of remote hearings. Should court leaders be a bit more cautious about the use of remote hearings?

The Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School and LaGratta Consulting LLC are conducting a randomized control trial examining the effects of in-person versus remote hearings for self-represented family law litigants in the 3rd Judicial District Court of Utah (Salt Lake County). Early data trends suggest matters proceeded similarly regardless of medium, with little effect on time to disposition or appearance rates. The exception was in litigants’ ratings of perceived fairness, which was significantly lower in remote proceedings. Given the documented connection between perceptions of fairness and voluntary compliance, public trust, and system legitimacy, remote proceedings may come at a steep cost without targeted mitigation strategies to narrow this gap.

Litigant perceptions

Question: “Did the court treat you fairly today?”

• 84% of in-person litigants said yes, the court treated them fairly

• 65% of remote litigants said yes, the court treated them fairly

Data collection is still underway, with final results and corresponding policy and practice recommendations expected in 2024. But in the meantime perhaps the gap in perceived fairness should give court leaders reason to pause or at least conduct more research. Download a mid-project brief here or contact Emily LaGratta (Emily@lagratta.com) and Renee Danser (rdanser@law.harvard.edu) with questions or comments