Marshall County Circuit Court Judge Curtis Palmer approached the county commissioners Monday morning with a request to utilize space in the courthouse basement for residents to fill out legal paperwork.
“Thirty to forty percent of our litigants are what we call self represented. They don’t have lawyers, they’re representing themselves. Right now we have somewhat of a hodgepodge of assistance we give to those people. What I’d like to do is to be able to consolidate all of those different forms that we have in various places in the courthouse and online and put them in one place in the courthouse. This would give them a place to sit down and work and fill them out,” said Judge Palmer.
One suggestion was to use a room in the basement that is used for the storage of bookcases holding old law books and desk space for the Indiana Housing Authority representative. Another suggestion was to use the break room for the maintenance department which is a larger space. Those two areas could be swapped to serve this request.
The commissioners suggested storing the bookcases in the EMA building and rearrange the two rooms mentioned for a legal resource center. Judge Palmer said the books are 20 years old and are no longer of any use to legal representatives. They could be taken to be recycled.
