Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, State Court Administrator David Slayton, Travis County District Judge Lora Livingston and four other Texas Judiciary representatives recently concluded a three-day meeting in Houston, Texas that brought together nearly 300 court leaders from 49 states, three territories and the District of Columbia to focus on devising solutions to improve access to justice for litigants with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). The team plans on focusing on efforts to provide resources to courts in the state to fulfill the need for interpreters and to educate county officials and court representatives on the need for providing interpreters. For more information on OCA's Texas Remote Interpreter Project, please visit http://www.txcourts.gov/oca/DVRA/trip.asp.

The Supreme Court Advisory Committee (SCAC), which is responsible for advising the Supreme Court on potential rule changes, recently completed its work on the proposed rules for small claims cases handled in justice courts. House Bill 79, which was passed in the special legislative session last summer, abolished the small claims court in each county as of May 1, 2013, and required the Supreme Court to adopt rules to define a small claims case and the rules of civil procedure for those cases. The Supreme Court is directed by that bill to promulgate the rules no later than May 1, 2013. To review the proposed rule as it was submitted to the SCAC by the Small Claims Task Force, visit http://tinyurl.com/8ljxomn. To view the Task Force's supplemental report, visit http://tinyurl.com/8jl2qer.

One of the barriers to a person's guaranteed access to the courts is a person's limited proficiency in English. To help eliminate this barrier, the Office of Court Administration (OCA) has hired two licensed Spanish court interpreters, and contracted with a commercial interpretation service for languages other than Spanish, to provide telephonic interpretation services. The interpretation services are available at no cost to the district and county-level courts for two types of cases: intimate partner violence (this program is known as the Texas Remote Interpreter Project and is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women) and child protection (funded by a grant from the Supreme Court of Texas Children's Commission).

What are the courts saying about their experience with remote interpretation?

−       Judge John Delaney, Senior Judge assigned to the East Texas Cluster Court in Brazos County, has used the services of an OCA staff interpreter for child protection hearings and said, "... I thought it went just fine. Excellent. No criticism."

−       Judge Deborah L. Richardson, Travis County Associate Judge (Ret.), has used the services of an OCA staff interpreter for a domestic violence hearing and said, "The process of setting up the remote Spanish interpretation was very easy once we had a speaker phone set up in the courtroom.  I was very pleased with the interpretation and the court reporter also reported that she was impressed with the result.  This is a wonderful resource."

To learn more and enroll for services, please visit http://www.courts.state.tx.us/oca/dvra/trip.asp, call (512) 463-5656, or e-mail interpreter@txcourts.gov. The interpreter office can also help with general questions related to interpretation, translation and language access issues.

Since May 2012, OCA has been working with counties and cities to get complete reporting data for mandatory collection improvement programs across the state. As of September 30th, 15% of participating counties/cities have complete information in the OCA system and another 63% are working with OCA to complete their data. Twenty-seven programs have not yet reported because they are new and not all data is available at this time. OCA greatly appreciates the assistance we have received from the collection improvement staff of all participating counties and cities.

OCA hosted its first Case Management Vendor Round Table, inviting all vendors that provide case management systems in Texas to attend. Sixteen different case management vendors attended. At the first meeting, OCA and the vendors discussed how OCA, CUC, TAC and other organizations can team up with the vendor community to assist local counties with issues that we have seen. The main topics at our initial meeting were eFiling integration and the Judicial Council monthly reports. Several good ideas were generated, and OCA and the vendor community will be working together to follow up.

The next vendor round table will be held in Austin and will focus on educating the vendor community on the various activities that a clerk or court coordinator must perform.