Assistant Professor Staci Pratt develops tool for tenants facing eviction
Assistant Professor Staci Pratt has developed a new online tool in partnership with Colorado’s 4th Judicial District to assist Colorado tenants facing eviction.
The tool is part of the district’s Division Court-Assisted Recovery from Eviction program, or CARE, which has developed community partnerships and several easy-to-access tools to reduce docket congestion, increase clarity in eviction proceedings and strengthen public confidence in the judicial process.
Pratt, an assistant teaching professor and Head of Emerging Technology & Research Law Librarian, teaches the Access to Justice Innovation Lab at Colorado Law. The course focuses on understanding the experiences of people who encounter legal problems, particularly those who cannot afford an attorney. Students explore human-centered design, plain-language communication, legal technology, and innovative approaches to delivering legal services.
“I was interested in the project because it brings together several areas I care deeply about: access to justice, legal education, technology, and human-centered design,” Pratt said. “It also demonstrates that innovation in the legal field does not necessarily mean creating something technologically complicated. Sometimes the most meaningful innovation is making an existing legal process understandable and usable for the people who need it most.”
What is the purpose of the automated Tenant Answer Tool, and who will it help?
The Tenant Answer Tool is designed to help people facing eviction understand their legal options and respond to an eviction lawsuit, even if they cannot afford a lawyer. For many tenants, receiving an eviction notice or court papers is frightening and confusing. They may have only a few days to respond, and the legal process can be difficult to navigate without assistance.
The tool walks tenants through a series of plain-language questions and uses their answers to help prepare the court documents they need to respond to an eviction case.
Rather than expecting someone to understand legal terminology or figure out complicated court forms on their own, the tool breaks the process into manageable steps.
Our goal is to make the legal system more accessible, particularly for low-income tenants and people who are representing themselves. It does not replace an attorney, but it can help tenants understand the process, select potential defenses, and take an important first step toward protecting their rights.
How did you become involved in this project?
My work has long focused on improving access to justice, particularly for people who must navigate the legal system without an attorney. One of the biggest challenges we face is that legal rights mean very little if people do not understand how to exercise them.
In this project, Magistrate Andrea Paprzycki from the 4th Judicial District in Colorado Springs contacted me with concerns about the struggles pro-se litigants faced in eviction proceedings before her court. The court was using a fill-in-the blank answer form at the time. Self-represented individuals would often fill it out incorrectly, and the magistrate wanted to try something different.
The Tenant Answer Tool offered an opportunity to address that problem in a practical way. Eviction cases are especially important because the consequences are immediate and significant. Losing housing can affect employment, education, family stability, and a person's overall well-being.
How were students involved in its creation?
Lab student Nicole Ela played a critical role in the development of the tool. She helped analyze legal notice requirements in the eviction context and translate those demands into guided interview questions in the tool.
Student involvement is an important part of the Access to Justice Innovation Lab's approach. The lab creates opportunities for law students to move beyond traditional legal research and consider how the law actually works for people who do not have lawyers.
This kind of work gives students a different perspective on the practice of law. They learn that knowing the law is only one part of providing meaningful legal assistance. They also need to understand the experiences of the people using the legal system and how to design solutions that are practical, accessible and effective.
What were the toughest challenges you faced in creating the tool?
One of the greatest challenges was translating a complicated legal process into something that someone without legal training could understand and use.
Lawyers are accustomed to working with legal rules, procedural requirements, and exceptions. But someone facing eviction may be encountering the court system for the first time, often under tremendous stress. We had to think carefully about what information a tenant needs, how to ask questions in plain language, and how to ensure the tool provides accurate information without overwhelming the user.
Another challenge was balancing simplicity with legal accuracy. Eviction cases can involve different facts, defenses, deadlines, and procedural requirements. The tool needs to account for those differences while still providing a straightforward experience.
Perhaps the most important challenge was remembering that we were not designing a tool for lawyers. We were designing it for people facing the possible loss of their homes. That meant approaching the project from the tenant's perspective, rather than simply digitizing an existing legal form.
What do you hope will come from this project?
First and foremost, I hope the tool helps more tenants participate meaningfully in their eviction cases. Too often, people lose important legal rights simply because they do not understand the process or cannot complete the paperwork necessary to present their side of the story.
I also hope the project demonstrates what is possible when law schools, legal professionals, technologists, courts and community partners work together to solve access-to-justice problems. This semester, lab students are preparing a Spanish version of the eviction answer tool with support from the Colorado Judicial Branch's Office of Language Access. The nature of this work evolves to meet user needs.
Beyond eviction cases, the same approach can be applied to many other legal problems, including family law, debt collection, consumer protection and protection orders. We have an opportunity to rethink how legal information and assistance are delivered, particularly for people who cannot afford traditional legal representation.
Ultimately, I would like to see projects like this become part of a broader shift in the legal profession—from expecting people to figure out how to navigate complicated legal systems to designing systems that people can actually use.