Court navigators are undergraduate, graduate and law students who have been trained about how the court works and can help an unrepresented person navigate the steps of the court process. This program focuses on helping tenants who are suing landlords for failure to repair hazardous housing conditions such as lack of heat or hot water, leaks and mold, and vermin infestation.
Tenants in 极乐禁地e experience great difficulty in enforcing their legal right to safe and healthy housing, and court navigators can help. The program also assists defendants in debt collection cases, working alongside attorneys from the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service and Pro Bono Resource Center.
Court navigators provide tenants with basic information about their legal options, assist them with filling out court forms, go with them into the courtroom hearings and into hallway negotiations, and aid with any followup steps afterward. They also help tenants with organizing their paperwork, figuring out budgets, and getting access to resources. In other words, court navigators can help unrepresented people pursue their legal cases more effectively than when they go it alone. They can also help streamline the legal process to make the court work more efficiently. Navigators assisting with debt collection help inform unrepresented defendants with information about making a defense, negotiating a settlements, and coping with a judgment against them.UBalt students who helped develop the plans for the Court Navigator Program and served as UBalt's first navigators talk about how it works and why it's so important.
