Superior Court of California County of Fresno - 030174
Abstract Number: 030174
October 2003
The Superior Court of California, County of Fresno established the Centro de Recursos Legales, a Spanish Self-help Legal Resource Center, to provide legal information to Spanish speaking self-represented litigants. The center was designed in order to ensure that language barriers would not prevent Spanish speaking self represented litigants from accessing legal information and resolving their own legal problems irrespective of their English language ability. The center is open Monday through Friday and provides self represented litigants with legal forms and instruction materials on civil legal issues including family law, unlawful detainer, civil harassment, and guardianship. Legal information is available in do-it-yourself packets that walk users through the process step-by-step with Spanish instructions written at a fifth grade level directly inserted on sample court forms. The center also offers workshops on topics such as family law, civil harassment, and guardianship. Staff members will also review completed court documents prior to filing at the court facilitator's office which is located adjacent to the center. The center does not have any income eligibility requirements and all of its services are free and open to the public.
The center also runs a volunteer interpreter bureau which recruits volunteers from a local interpreter school to work in the center and provide translations for customers in court. The center recruits volunteers to participate in its Interpreter Development mentoring program where interpreters can receive high-quality training that will benefit them as they study to become court certified interpreters. The center has a strong relationship with a number of court certified interpreters who participated in the mentoring program prior to being certified and they actively encourage current students to participate in the mentoring program in order to receive valuable training experience. Volunteers are also used to translate written informational documents for client use. The center's volunteer interpreter development bureau has been incredibly successful recruiting volunteers and, for the first time since the inception of the project in 2001, they currently have a surplus of Spanish/English interpreters. The center was funded by the Judicial Council of California as part of the Model Self-Help Centers Pilot Program which is described in further detail through the link below. To learn more about the Centro de Recursos Legales, visit the center's website in English and in Spanish.
Contact Information:
Sylvia Sorondo Centro de Recursos Legales 255 N. Fulton, Suite 101 Fresno, CA 93701 Phone: (559) 497-7820 Email
LSC:
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