By: Lillie Schneyer, Program Coordinator, Forms, Access to Justice Division
After several years of development, the Eviction Subcommittee and the Forms Committee of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice were pleased to publish two new eviction form sets this year. These forms, the Motion to Remove an Eviction Court File from Public Record and the Eviction Answer, Defenses, and Counterclaims, offer self-represented litigants the tools to understand and participate more fully in their court cases.
Since 2012, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice (ATJ Commission) has charged its Forms Committee with creating accessible, plain language forms for use by self-represented litigants. “The Standardized Statewide Forms are at the core of our mission, and I am extremely grateful for the committee’s continuing efforts to modernize our forms suite,” said Judge Jorge Ortiz, Chair of the Access to Justice Commission and Circuit Court Judge, Nineteenth Judicial Circuit. “Resources like the forms make access to justice possible for self-represented litigants throughout the state.”
The Forms Committee and its subject matter specific subcommittees, comprised of experts from around the state, are regularly adding to the many forms already published. The need for a new form set is identified by those subcommittees or from comments submitted directly by court stakeholders and the public to the Access to Justice Forms Committee. The subcommittee then creates the first draft of the forms and incorporates comments from user testing, the public, and Forms Committee into the final product.
The Eviction Subcommittee consists of attorneys and non-attorneys, including some who work with tenants and others who work with landlords. “Eviction courts are the busiest courtrooms in the state, dealing with housing issues that are of critical importance both to the parties and their communities. Since its creation, the Eviction Subcommittee has worked with a sense of purpose to create forms that assist litigants in navigating the eviction court process,” said Mark Swartz, Chair of the Eviction Subcommittee and Executive Director of Law Center for Better Housing.
Before this year, the subcommittee had published an Eviction Complaint form set and a set of Eviction Orders, including Agreed Orders and the Eviction Order. Swartz notes, “After completing the two most common eviction forms—the complaint and eviction order—the subcommittee felt a renewed sense of urgency to design an answer to the complaint. This allows tenants to respond, raise defenses, and present counterclaims. Additionally, tenant advocates have highlighted how having an eviction on record often hinders housing applications. Therefore, we also created the sealing motion to help tenants request removal of eviction records from the public domain, as allowed by the Eviction Act.”
Like all forms published by the ATJ Commission, the new eviction forms are in plain language, which requires defining legal jargon in the forms, if not replacing it altogether—remove eviction court file from the public record instead of “seal,” for example. In addition to the plain language forms, through the Commission’s partnership with Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO), ILAO staff created and published guided interviews for the eviction form sets, including the Eviction Answer, Motion to Remove, and Eviction Complaint. These interviews ask the user a series of questions and turn their responses into completed forms. The guided interviews offer self-represented litigants even more support in participating in an eviction case.
The Access to Justice Forms Project is currently in the process of redesigning its published forms. The new design restructures the appearance of the form, clarifies instructions for the user, and adds white space and icons as visual cues to make the forms even easier to understand and complete. In the coming months, the Eviction Subcommittee will transfer its existing eviction forms into the new format, continuing their work on the forefront of creating access to justice for self-represented litigants in eviction cases in Illinois. “I take pride in the subcommittee’s work. Collaborating with advocates from both sides and members of the judiciary, we share the common goal of making eviction court more equitable and accessible to all,” said Swartz.