White pillars at a court house

The Agile Court: Improving State Courts in the Service of Access to Justice and the Court User Experience

The Agile Court: Improving State Courts in the Service of Access to Justice and the Court User Experience

The gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of a program is a randomized study. As in medicine and other fields, “no field can claim to be evidence-based without a central role for the [randomized control trial] RCT as a means of accumulating knowledge about what works and what does not.” Randomized studies, while not widely recognized within the legal profession, have been conducted on a range of topics, from legal aid providers and legal assistance, to incarceration and sentencing in criminal matters, to alternative dispute resolution. Indeed, randomized studies are demonstrating what works and what does not in important ways: demonstrating, on the one hand, the effectiveness of drug courts and “swift, certain, and fair” probation, versus the utter failure of “scared straight” juvenile delinquency prevention programs on the other.