MS BONNIE ROSE HOUGH

Bonnie Rose Hough is the managing attorney of the Center for Families, Children and the Courts of the Administrative Office of the Courts in California where she has been employed since 1997. She supervises the AOC’s Equal Access Project which focuses on helping courts meet the needs of self-represented litigants. The project coordinates the California Courts Self-Help Website (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), which provides over 900 pages of legal and procedural information and referrals and has recently been translated into Spanish (www.sucorte.ca.gov), as well as a site that provides resources for courts and legal services programs providing self-help assistance. She oversees four grant programs providing funding for legal services and court-based self-help programs.

She also assists the Family and Juvenile Advisory Committee with family law forms and rules including developing rules and procedures for limited scope representation (unbundling), and a series of forms designed to assist self-represented litigants successfully complete dissolutions, paternity actions and similar matters.

Bonnie serves as Committee Counsel to the Judicial Council’s Task Force on Self-Represented Litigants which developed and is now charged with implementing, a “Statewide Action Plan for Serving Self-Represented Litigants in California.” This report, which was approved by the Judicial Council in 2004, provides the basis for integrating services for self-represented litigants into the California courts. This includes a strong emphasis on attorney-supervised court-based self-help centers, community partnerships, and establishing self-help assistance as a core function. She edited and co-wrote a “Benchguide for Judicial Officers on Handling Cases Involving Self-Represented Litigants” which has been adapted by more than 10 states and received the State Justice Institute’s Howell Heflin award for a grant project that has the greatest opportunity for making major change.

She is currently staffing the Elkins Family Law Task Force which was created at the direction of California’s Chief Justice to conduct a comprehensive review of family law proceedings and recommend to the Judicial Council of California proposals that will increase access to justice, ensure due process, and provide for more effective and consistent rules, policies, and procedures.

She has made presentations on issues relating to self-representation at:

• Conference of Chief Justices and State Court Administrators
• National Association of Court Managers
• California State Bar Annual Meetings and its Ethics Symposium
• Presiding Judges and Court Administrators
• National Legal Aid Defenders Association
• American Bar Association
• American Association of Law Librarians