The Challenge
The New Hampshire Judicial Branch website is the first stop for thousands of people who go to court without a lawyer. Self-represented litigants (SRLs) came looking for a form, a deadline, or a plain answer to “what happens next” and too often left without one. Content was organized around the court’s structure rather than users’ tasks, legal terms went unexplained, and the litigation information SRLs needed most was buried several clicks deep. The result: incomplete filings, missed hearings, and clerks fielding questions the website should have answered. The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) needed an evidence-based plan to reorient the site around SRL needs, raise satisfaction with navigation and resource access by at least 10%, meet WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA standards, and do it all within the State of New Hampshire’s Drupal 10 templates.
Our Approach
We started with the people using the site. Working with the Office of Access and Community Engagement, we mapped NHJB’s SRL stakeholder groups and launched an AOC-approved user survey on navigation, accessibility, readability, and overall user satisfaction, gathering responses from more than 70 individuals. Those responses set the baseline metrics for the project and grounded our SRL personas in data rather than assumptions.
We then audited the full site: a gap analysis of litigation-related content, an evaluation of the SRL user journey, menu structure, and search, and a review against WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA requirements. We benchmarked NHJB against peer state court systems and National Center for State Courts guidance to identify proven SRL tools & best practices. Our report laid out, for each area of the site, the research, the best practices, the gaps, the options with their risks, and our recommendation. At its center was a reorientation of the site to better support SRLs and the tasks they perform most often: new SRL landing pages, clearer content and navigation paths, and quick links and call-to-action buttons built to fit the existing Drupal 10 modules, backed by a Technical Assistance Plan and a post-implementation survey plan to measure the impact of the recommended changes impact. We presented to the Administrative Council, incorporated their feedback, and helped prioritize a final set of recommendations.
We stayed through implementation, providing technical, design, and content assistance as approved changes went live, along with accompanying documentation and sample designs for guidance. Once the implementation period concluded with the recommended changes made, we re-ran the same user survey to measure the impact of our changes against the baseline.
The Result
The SRL user journey map we produced is now printed out in poster size and hung on the wall inside the AOC office, and the team there continues to deliver against their roadmap of SRL-centered enhancements – all within their existing Drupal platform. They also have page structures that meet WCAG 2.1 AA, and trained staff who can support the new site and feed user insight back into it.
Most importantly, survey results show that SRLs in New Hampshire are having a better experience finding the information they need to navigate the court system with confidence. Compared with the baseline survey, the post-implementation survey showed a 43% increase in overall website satisfaction and a 30% increase in perceived ease of use among SRLs.
