February 13, 2025 • 46 mins
How do we create a more “person-centered” judicial system, and when is fairness more valued than winning? Join the latest episode of Provost Cybele Raver’s ‘Quantum Potential’ podcast with law professor Lauren Sudeall.
Vanderbilt University provost C. Cybele Raver explores civil justice inequities with Lauren Sudeall, law professor and director of Vanderbilt's Access to Justice program. Through her groundbreaking research in rural Alabama and Georgia, Sudeall reveals how low-income individuals navigate eviction proceedings—with or without legal representation—and advocates for a more "person-centered" judicial system. The conversation examines how courts handle eviction cases across jurisdictions, the impact of food and housing insecurity, and why many defendants value fairness over winning. Sudeall also shares her perspective as a legal scholar from Boston conducting research in impoverished rural communities in the U.S. South.
Listen and subscribe to the Quantum Potential podcast, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
The Quantum Potential podcast is produced by Vanderbilt University. The leadership team includes Metanoya Z. Webb, director of content and editorial strategy for this episode, and Sydney Jones-Wright, director of academic affairs communications. Patrick Sams is the senior social media specialist, and Maisie Wilson is the senior creative project manager. Mike Todd is the university visual media manager.
Special thanks to Jad Abumrad, Vanderbilt University Distinguished Research Professor of Communication of Science and Technology and the executive producer of the Quantum Potential podcast and video series. We also want to thank Major Jackson, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, for lending his voice to the end credits for this episode.
For more information about Quantum Potential, go to vanderbilt.edu/quantumpotential/podcast.
The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or Vanderbilt University.
Copyright 2025, Vanderbilt University.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
If I think about these papers ora lot of the work that I do,
(00:02):
you could think about some ofit as addressing these blind
There are these areas thatwe're just not focused on, and
probably why I've been drawnto a lot of the work I've
a lawyer, but also asan academic.
People are thinking abouteviction, but they're not
it in ... in these places,right?
They're thinking aboutcivil legal needs, but they're
it with respect to thispopulation.
(00:23):
And I think not only is itimportant, but I think
real lesson here forthinking about
people just feeling ignored orbeing left out of a narrative
and what happens, right?
And part of what happens, atleast in the legal system, is
respect, right, and trust inthe courts.
Today I'm so excited tointroduce Lauren Sudeall, who
joined Vanderbilt Law in 2023and who directs our Access
(00:44):
to Justice Initiative.
Lauren's research focuses onhow lower-income individuals
system—with or without alawyer—and her work has been
like the Columbia and Harvardlaw reviews.
(01:09):
Welcome to Quantum Potential,a podcast dedicated to
My name is Cybele Raver, and Iserve as the provost of
As a leader in higher educationand as a social scientist,
that we can transform highereducation for the 21st century.
At my core, I am wildly curiousabout other people's
(01:30):
in science, the social sciences,the humanities or the arts.
This podcast gives us theopportunity to break open new
discovery and creativeexpression.
Before joining academia, Laurenclerked for Judge
(01:51):
on the 9th Circuit andJustice John
She also worked at the SouthernCenter for Human Rights,
indigent clients facing capitalcharges, and advocating
to counsel in Alabamaand Georgia.
Lauren is a member of theAmerican Law Institute
an associate reporter onhigh-volume civil adjudication.
With degrees from Yaleand Harvard Law School
(02:13):
of the Harvard Law Review,Lauren brings deep expertise
and insight to Vanderbilt.
We are so lucky to haveher with us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to have you, Lauren.
Really exciting.
I was really captivated by yourwork, specifically addressing
the needs of everyday people.
This idea that there are somany people in this country
(02:35):
don't have access to legalrepresentation.
You have a great paper called"Creating a People-First Court
where you really set out toreframe and reorient legal
understanding for analyzingcases and shifting that to
understanding people'slaw by looking at court data in
a fundamentally different way.
(02:56):
I'm fascinated by that, the ideathat if we took a
approach, that we would seepeople's experiences across
of court proceedings, differentencounters with the legal
Can you tell us a littlebit more about that?
Sure. Courts are meant to servepeople, ultimately, and so in
ways, I don't think this shouldbe a particularly radical
(03:19):
They're meant to helppeople resolve disputes,
things that come up in everydaylives:
things relating to your housing,to your family, to your job.
And yet the way in which courtsare designed are, for the most
by lawyers and for lawyers.
And the reality is that mostpeople in navigating the legal
system today don't have alawyer,
so not only might they befrustrated by some of what they
(03:40):
and what they encounter isprobably very different from
but it actually makes itdifficult, if not impossible,
them to resolve these issues.
One piece of that that we triedto address in this paper was
thinking about what courts aretracking or how they're tracking
fact that they track casesmakes sense,
that's sort of how theyview the world, right:
How many cases are theymoving through their system?
(04:01):
How fast can they get throughthem?
But the problem is the way inwhich they see the world doesn't
to see what that experience islike from the individual's
So my colleague, CharlotteAlexander, and I set out to try
conceive of the systemdifferently.
That required a lot ofrestructuring of court data,
which took us about a year—which should maybe show you
how difficult it is to actuallyreconfigure the data in this
(04:22):
way.
But what we hoped that wouldallow us to do was to think
courts and the court process ...
not through the lens of thecourts and
but instead through the person,right?
A person may have multipledifferent touchpoints with
over a long period of time, andwe wanted
points and get a really broadpicture of what their experience
(04:45):
It made me, as you werespeaking, immediately think
you know, this university.
What if I, in my role asprovost, only focused on classes
and I never asked what was astudent's experience moving from
Or what was the student'sexperience of
And that idea of seeing thesystem from
(05:06):
of service or from theinstitutional perspective
way in which individuals arenavigating those systems ...
But to do that, you did thisamazing thing methodologically,
You actually basicallycompletely took
and I just thought it would bereally helpful if you tell us a
(05:28):
about what you did in terms offinding this random set of a
out of tens of thousands ofcases in
I think one thing to point outis that we were
how we had to approach thisbecause of
So we did most of thisthrough data scraping,
(05:48):
and one of the challenges was,was we had to figure out where
We couldn't just sort of getthis whole universe of cases.
We had to have a more targetedbeginning.
So we started, for a fewdifferent reasons, by
who had criminal cases.
Part of why we did that isbecause criminal court data
information about demographics—things like race and gender—and
we wanted to have thatYet civil cases often don't
(06:10):
have that information.
So we knew one benefit ofstarting with that data set is
we would have that information.
The downside of that is that itdoes mean that the data set we
limited to people who had someengagement with the, with the
We weren't able to capturepeople who had no engagement
that part of the system at all.
But essentially we went througha process of identifying a group
(06:32):
and then ... using thosepeople, ran
systems to try to get all of thecases affiliated with those
This was a complicated process,in part because we also had to
disambiguate people who hadsimilar names and trying to
cases truly were of the sameperson.
So we went through a very long,complex process to do that,
(06:52):
and in the end also had to getrid of some cases where we
be sure that we were actuallydealing with the same person.
But what we were ultimately leftwith was this data set of ...
all of the cases that sprungfrom the
through this criminal case dataset.
Amazing.
And when you did that,if you could just give us a
sense or a feeling of, uh, whatlevel of, not only that you were
(07:15):
confident that you foundbut the sense that people
did in fact have multipletouchpoints with different
courts?
I think the findings, um, thatwere yielded from that paper
surprising from my perspective.
So you get a sense, right, notonly of how many cases each
average, but things like whatare the
(07:37):
what is the sequence of thosecases?
What is the average amount oftime that
Um, I mean, there's so muchmore.
This is in a way isreally just the beginning.
It's sort of, we, we framedthis as
that it would be so difficultto do.
But our hope is really todemonstrate the kinds of things
find, more so than the entireuniverse of what you might find.
(07:58):
Um, but to give sort ofone more concrete example:
So if you think about howdifferent case
of the things that we saw waswe looked
Um, so we looked at peoplewho'd experienced one eviction,
and we were able to see thatpeople who'd experienced a
30% of those people had anothercase follow in the same year.
(08:21):
For people who had experiencedserial evictions, so multiple
evictions with the samelandlord,
those people had a 56% chanceof having And for people who had
experienced eviction withlandlords, the number went up
to 80%.
So ... we were careful to notmake claims about causation
but I think that might suggesta relationship, for example,
(08:42):
between housing instability andfuture legal engagement.
The fact the more, sort of,intensely you're experiencing
that might sort of ... haveripple effects
and I think, to me, that'sa really important finding.
Absolutely.
I ... I'm so glad you went tothat point
causal claims from those data,but instead pointing out that
(09:07):
misfortune begets moremisfortune somehow,
that, um, families areexperiencing multiple challenges
and that they cascade in a waythat, um, certainly aligns with
experience poverty-relatedstressors:
That housing instability andfood insufficiency and job loss,
can sometimes co-occur in waysthat are profoundly, uh,
(09:29):
to families.
But I think that way in whichyou saw
really poignant, but alsoreally telling.
And that you were very carefulto steer out of where I think
we often get stuck, honestly,which is um, "Well, so is that
really a problem of proneness tobe evicted on the individual
side?
Or proneness of the court to,uh, generate
(09:55):
problem that it, uh, leads to afamily to be more unstably
Right—this idea that having a writ
against you leads you toa ... more difficult time
getting a lease in your nextSo that idea that you're
avoiding those causal claims,but you do have this really
great way ofdamage or collateral
(10:15):
consequences.
Can you talk a littlebit about that construct?
Sure.
One point that I just wanted tomake, I think, that touches on a
things that you've said is ...
the, theyour analogy to the university
context, I think is anit's, it's broken into these
silos, and it sort of neatlypackages things and labels them.
(10:35):
Whether it's civil, criminal,right? History, English, law—
but yet the reality forpeople's lives
of different issues, and oftenthere's a lot of overlap between
Not only might one issue lead toanother, but one incident can
touch many of these differentcontexts, right?
So, um, I think domesticviolence is a good example of
(10:59):
Somebody ... one incident ofviolence could
It might require that somebodyelse get an order of protection,
which is a civil matter.
It may involve needing torelocate in terms of housing.
It may involve a lot of familylaw issues—divorce, custody—
and yet these issues are placedin all different parts of the
when the reality is a person isdealing with this one issue and
(11:21):
has all of these things thatneed to be ... need to be
So I think the way in whichwe've constructed the system is
mapped well onto, onto people'slives,
which means it's not very, it'snot efficient for the courts and
really work well for courtsbecause they
certainly doesn't work well forthe people
Yeah, I mean, I think that wasso well put regardless of cause
(11:46):
uh, causal effects, uh, andwhich, uh, issues are driving
issues that, uh, reallycomplicate families' lives or
courts and this, the nonprofitorganizations that are
providing services to families,still have to manage and or
have, um, approaches to meetingindividuals' needs.
(12:08):
And this way in which aproblem-focused court, whether
court or family court, takes onthose additional subsequent or
preceding instances, at leastit tries to,
immediately I thought aboutthe ways in which your students
must have had a phenomenallyclearer understanding of that—
having done thispeople-centered effort to code
(12:29):
the data, um, rather than a, acentered, uh, coding of the
data.
And I wondered how much yourstudents, um, are interested
in that more holistic approach,or whether they view it as, um,
sort of Well, it is...
it is a massive challenge.
(12:49):
I don't think any one person orany one court can address all of
but I think the reason thatdata is so important is because
it gives us some sense of whatthe landscape even looks like.
Part of why we wanted to do thisproject is because by not
or making data available in thisway, it really masks this entire
different way of seeing thesystem.
Which... you're right that itmakes the problem seem maybe
(13:12):
even larger in some sense,but I think it's a good
starting point—not just for courts to think
about howthey should create problem
solving orcan deal with multiple
different issues.
But it also, as you sort ofalluded to, helps legal service
about how to structure theirservices.
There are already a lot ofexamples of this with public
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offices that do use socialworkers
or public defender officesworking with legal aid offices
sort of address variousdifferent problems that someone
But I think, as you weresaying, it's
understand that when they'rerepresenting clients, they're
In law school, we'reguilty of the same siloing.
I'm one of the very few people,I think, that I know in the
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really, who thinks about bothof these different contexts.
And I feel really fortunate tohave practiced on the criminal
but yet a lot of my researchrelates to the civil side.
So I often find myself as sortof the
civil access to justice, whohas a lot
And similarly, I find myself inconversations with criminal
and scholars who aren't reallythinking about the civil system.
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And I think for students italso is
creative thinking about, right,how to
I have a paper that I knowwe're not talking about today,
but it's called"Delegalization,"and the idea is taking ideas
behind decriminalization andabout whether any of those ideas
could apply to the civilAnd I think it's straddling
(14:38):
those two worlds that allows meto think about how concepts
might translate from one sphereIn your papers, um, I was
(15:03):
really impressedquantitative data and
qualitative data.
And that you interviewed, youknow, legal aid staff members,
you interviewed court clerks,you interviewed judges,
you interviewed publicdefenders—
that way in which you werecollecting the perspectives of
(15:24):
stakeholders or participants inthat, sort of, universe of
Can you tell me a little bitabout what ... how did they see
What was it like driving around?
You know, when I think aboutanother of your papers that I
talk about where you're insuburban and rural counties in
was their view of you as aHarvard Law,
you know, recently trained, uh,faculty member who's now at
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And how did it all work interms of your own experience?
It's a good question.
Um, and you know, part of whatI have
been able to do in the lastseveral years
where not only do I get to learnabout these issues in the field,
but learn from colleagues.
And also bringing law studentsand graduate students into that,
to learn from each other andfrom...
(16:07):
[Absolutely]people in different disciplines.
So, and you know, to your pointabout mixed-method research ...
to me, I almost find it hard tothink about doing research, at
regard to these issues, in anyother way.
Because the quantitative datagives you
have a human element to ... toit
and doesn't really explain whyall the
So part of what I really lovedabout that project was not only
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of what was happening in thesecourts,
but, as you mentioned, talkingto the people involved.
And we felt like it was reallyimportant to get the perspective
of a number of different people,so the judges, clerks and court
personnel who in these courtsthinking about state and local
courts—play a really outsizedTalking to tenants,
talking to landlords,talking to law enforcement
who are, you know, servingthings on
(16:53):
So that was really important.
And as to, right, my role in it—it is sort of an irony.
I'm someone who's spent alot of time in major cities.
I'm from the Northeast, so I'mnot of
a lot of time practicing in theSouth in
And I was really struck whendoing that
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I would be in on a day-to-daybasis ...
and how different they werefrom what
but even what I would've hadhave conceived of as what
a court was or should be.
Um, so that, to me,being immersed as an academic
and thinking about these issues,it, it struck me that a lot of
the research similarly wasbig urban courts and maybe
leaving this other piece of theYou know, there you are clerking
(17:36):
in a, in a Supreme Courtand then you're in very small
counties—uh, in very small rural
counties in the U.S. South.
To me, that must have justbeen a tremendous contrast,
but perhaps, uh, maybe yousaw similarities across both.
I was just fascinated to thinkabout your CV on the one hand,
(17:56):
uh, you know, what I knew aboutyou from, um, all your
and then you as a datacollector, as a person out in
um, and how different or similaryour experiences must have been.
Well, we spend so much time, oreven in
I teach we don't necessarily dothis— but we spend so much time
focusing on such a small part ofThe number of cases that
(18:17):
actually make it to the SupremeThey're incredibly important,
but they're also incrediblyWe're talking about, right,
dozens of Yet state courts, thepercentage of
that are in state court day today are, right, nearing 98, if
(18:37):
We're talking about a lot ofcases, and this is where most
people spend their time.
So to me it's sort of shockingthat we don't spend more time
and thinking about these courts.
And, and think to your,to your other question,
being a lawyer doing thiswork is sort of interesting
because, and on one hand Ithink it
other disciplines don't alwayshave.
(18:59):
I think at least I found fromdoing work with sociologists and
they were amazed at the levelof access I was able to get,
I think, because there was sortof this sense from judges of
you know, you're one of us andwe can
But at times there was also, Ithink, some skepticism or almost
I was there with another agendaor to sue them for violations
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I was, I was going to find.
You were in the know, but atI assuaged them, I convinced
them thatas a lawyer seeking to file a
lawsuit.
So there was that tension.
But more so, I think itgave this level of access,
which again is, I think,another real
is that you have someone whohas sort
and maybe has that access butdoesn't have knowledge around
(19:41):
right quantitative methods.
Um, and so I think bringingthose things together gives you
really good, more detailedpicture of what's going on in
Absolutely rich readingand very detailed,
but also theoretically reallyfascinating.
I love that you raise in youreviction paper, this idea
of multiple axes of justice.
The praxis and paradox oftenants' and, and landlords'
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going to court and workingthrough the different ways in
state eviction laws are applied.
One of the things that was verymoving to me was that the way
were applied could lookcompletely different in
depending on the rurality ofthe court,
depending on how many cases camethrough that particular court—
and the way in which, um,you're really addressing what
(20:27):
people come to court hoping for.
I don't know if you would liketo read what the metrics of, uh,
justice are.
In assessing the data resultingfrom this study, we found it
to consider multiple axes ofjustice against which case
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and outcomes may be assessed.
One obvious set of metricsrelates to substantive outcomes:
Who won and who lost?
Was a monetary judgment awarded?
And if so, how much?
Was a writ of possession issued?
And was the tenant ultimatelyevicted?
Another set of metrics weconsidered in assessing the
quantitative and qualitativedata were
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Was the process by which theoutcome was reached perceived as
Was one party unfairlydisadvantaged?
I think that notion of "was itperceived as fair versus did I
um, and that idea that peoplemight have come out of court
feeling that they were fairlytreated, even though they lost—
it speaks to such a, again, adual lens on what the court is
(21:34):
And in that paper you describethe way in which judges—perhaps
surprisingly, perhaps not—wereopen to giving people their day
their ... their opportunity tobe heard,
even if it meant that most ofthe time those people in court
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uh, postpone or have reducedtheir amount of rent owed, for
um, they might not win on thatfront.
But they, they, theymight at least feel heard.
Can you say a little bit moreabout that?
One of the most surprisingthings and interesting things, I
that emerged from the study wasthis contrast between um,
(22:15):
justice and substantiveoutcomes.
So there's this really deepliterature on procedural justice
importance of people feelinglike they were heard and
or perceiving the process asfair— in part because it affects
people's view of the courts andthey view the system as
legitimate.
And I think what wasinteresting ...
and this relates to, I think,a, a broader
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what you already pointed out,the very
you have the state law applyingacross all these different
outcomes can be wildlydifferent.
I wrote another paper, thatwe're not gonna talk about
at how eviction preventionmeasures that were promulgated
government and by state courtsactually played out in state
And what you see is they playedout in wildly different ways
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depending on the state,depending on the court.
Um, so that's, that'sanother conversation.
So you have these courts thatare, that are operating very
and there's a narrative, Ithink, around eviction court—
and I think a lot of largerurban courts—that they're
this mass processing of cases,so cases are flipped through
one by one after another, andin these courts you get very
little procedural justice.
(23:22):
And so part of what wasinteresting is what we saw was
counter to that narrative,right?
In one case, we, you had a courtthat actually called people to
make sure that the time of thehearing would work for them—
set aside, dedicated time forpeople to hear their—which
is unheard of in a appeal.
Well, no, of course,'cause I grew up in New York
City, the idea that the courtcheck to see if you were
coming, right?
Right.
Or just, right,or setting aside, right,
(23:43):
specific assigned hearingtimes. And there was a real
for the, for both sides, right—particularly the tenant—to tell
their story.
We talked to judges who reallyexpressed this priority that
have their day in court and thatpeople be able to tell their
But that didn't at all map ontobetter substantive outcomes.
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And part of why that is, isbecause you can give someone the
opportunity to tell their story,but if they have no idea
how or whether that story isrelevant in the context of the
law,not only might it not make a
difference, but it mightSo one example is a tenant says
in response to an evictionnotice: "I owe rent, but I
pay it because I lost my job.
(24:25):
I was in the hospital.
I had to pay a hospital bill."These are things that people,
sort of, at a natural levelsort of social realities, right—
that's how they respond.
"You hear me.
You see me, you understand the,the challenge or the plight that
Right?
And the court says, "Sure,you know, tell us your story."
They write it down.
And then when it gets processedthrough the court, the court
"That is a legally insufficientanswer"
(24:46):
because that's not a defenseunder the
even having a hearing in courtsometimes.
So there's this real disconnect...
And in fact, they've admittedto nonpayment, right?
Right.
There's a real disconnectbetween, right,
it may on some level seemto be procedural justice.
But it's only sort of thishalf-hearted version of justice
because you're really not givingpeople any information as to
how they're supposed to use thatopportunity when they are being
(25:09):
Yeah.
And that conclusion, um, I haveto say going into the paper was
not what I expected, right?
It was a surprising set offindings and conclusions.
That in airing one's grievancesor getting a hearing, it doesn't
always work out for the tenantand could lead to a worse
And that this idea that informalprocedures for procedural
(25:31):
not a substitute forsubstantive justice.
That's such an incrediblypowerful position to
I think a lot about the, anadditional paper that we had the
read, that talks aboutindividuals who've
had previous civil courtengagement around things like,
(25:55):
um, where they weren't given anyguidance or support in thinking
or even knowing about, um, whatkind of legal, uh,
have had in those previousinstances.
So that that sense of trusting asystem is impossible if you
even know that that systemexists.
Just phenomenalin terms of thinking about all
the space there is to developfor people's access to justice.
(26:20):
Can you tell us a littlebit more about that?
Sure.
When I think in a lot of ways,or if I think about these papers
or a lot of the work that I do,I think you could think about
some of itThere are these areas that
we're just not focused on.
And I think it's probably whyI've been drawn to a lot of the
work I've done, both as alawyer, but also as an academic,
People are thinking abouteviction, but they're not
(26:41):
it in ... in these places.
They're thinking about civillegal needs, but they're not
it with respect to thispopulation.
And I think not only is itimportant—and
I don't wanna bring inpolitics, but
for, right, thinking aboutpeople just
a narrative and what happens,right?
And part of what happens, atleast in
(27:04):
respect and trust in the courts.
Yeah.
Um, so take what you will forthat in, you know, in our
But I think, you know, lookingat these blind spots is ...
not only to sort of shine alight on what's happening—
because the people there arejust as
but I think they give us theseunique opportunities to learn
may be playing out in adifferent context.
Which maybe you can't generalizethat to make a conclusion about
(27:27):
the whole system, but it canteach you something really
Right.
You know, the, the articlewe were talking about before:
We're looking at these smallercourts when we're used to
about these bigger courts,right?
We learned something from thatabout the relationship between
justice and substantiveoutcomes,
where if you just looked at thelarger courts, you might think
two are correlated or makeassumptions about why that's
(27:48):
And I think we tellthese narratives, right?
Just one small example is ...
we talk about ...
talk about how there's thisasymmetry as to who gets a
So in a lot of these biggercourts, you have 90% of
represented, but just 10% oftenants.
And that's this commonnarrative that
Well in these smaller courts,right, you've ... tenants almost
(28:11):
never have representation.
I think in the article we talkabout the fact that most judges
on one hand during their timeon the
seen a tenant with an attorney.
But the landlords alsodon't have an attorney.
The judge is often not anattorney.
So you have this world where,right, issues are being resolved
the legal system, and there'snary an attorney in the picture.
(28:32):
Is that a good thing?
Is that a bad thing?
I actually don't know.
And I think I'm not willingto make assumptions without,
right, researching it more.
But it certainly gives us avery different
Um, with the article that youwere sort of referencing in the
there's been not enoughresearch done,
research done on civil legalneeds.
(28:53):
But often people who areincarcerated are left out of
And that's for, I think, anumber of different reasons.
I think some of it has to dowith the siloing of the system,
also siloing of academics,right?
Academics typically focus onone or the other, so you don't
often get people thinking aboutthe civil legal needs that
people who are incarcerated maynot as related to their
criminal conviction,not related to collateral
consequences,but just everyday civil legal
(29:14):
needs thatUm, and I think it also
may be for other reasons.
So for example, the LegalServices Corporation, which
legal aid offices across thecountry, they don't allow those
work with people who areincarcerated.
So there is this sort ofpractical or
But I think you can learn a lotof really interesting things
(29:37):
or, and also think about reallyinteresting points of
when you're talking about apopulation that is in a very
(30:02):
How is that working in terms ofthe way in which you're leading
Vanderbilt, both with studentsand in terms of, uh, what you're
to do either locally orregionally or nationally in
up that issue of access tojustice?
Is that a message that isheard at the local level? Is it
heard at the national level?
How does that play out?
(30:23):
So I, well, I think again, here,I often end up playing this role
of the ... the blind spotidentifier.
And I, there's a lot of ironyin the
who's well known for speakingabout rural courts when I've
lived in a rural place in mylife.
I'm from Boston, I've lived inmajor cities across the country.
But again, I think it's morejust this inherent need to
the bigger picture and seeinghow this is playing out
(30:47):
I think there's a real tensionin the
to come up with solutions thatcan be
But as you were saying, whichwhich is really real, is that
every court is different,every jurisdiction is different.
And so both trying to come up,right, sort
but also knowing that they'regoing to
(31:09):
context and for particularcourts.
So I think that's been achallenge,
for example, with the projectthat I'm working on through
the American Law Institute onhigh-volume civil adjudication,
where we're trying to come upwith procedures and suggestions
courts operating in thecontext of
thinking about how those courtsreally need to operate
to actually serve the goals offairness and accuracy and
(31:33):
And trying to come up withsolutions that can be thought
sort of national broadsolutions,
knowing at the same time thatultimately every court is going
these things for the realitiesof the
Yeah, and it seems to me justeven the
forms that people had to fillout, led to different ... or led
(31:57):
different paths of disclosure,right?
That perhaps forms shouldn'tgive people, you know, a legally
insufficient prompt for ananswer that they would then be
tempted to give, but doesn't...
isn't gonna help them in anyway, right?
Right.
Or the, I mean, one of thecrazier things that we thought
at least that we saw was inone of the smaller courts,
um, and we talk about this inthe article,
(32:17):
they're basically given threeoptions:
I admit the claims. I deny theclaims. And I request a payment
What's so strange about that...
that doesn't sound likesomething you would say in a
where what's at issue islitigating, sort of, the nature
But I think it is a reflectionof how
eviction actually works inpractice.
Right.
There's another judge I thinkthat we, that we quote that we
(32:40):
through the legal aid attorneyswe interviewed who said, "All I
is that you pay the rent. We'renot here to litigate your case."
think people went to courtthinking that
And yet, the reality is a lotof these courts do function—
and I'm not laying theblame purely on them, right,
it's a function also of the lawand of a lot of other things—
but they do function essentiallyas rent collection agencies.
(33:04):
And so this ... the fact thatthe form which in itself is sort
of an admission, right?
Seems problematic to me if whatwe're thinking about is what
the court's role and why peopleare in court to resolve
It makes complete sense inhindsight,
or now that we crack itopen and look at it, right?
But probably wasn't really inthe minds of the person writing
(33:29):
Right.
I think that they probably justhad a
In that same court, you know,people would come to court,
and there was one—it wasa fairly rural county—
there was one apartment, Ithink, built
and, by the way, this court washeld in a ... in a essentially a
building that also housed thelocal jail,
I think, sort, of shifting ourideas of or how it might feel.
(33:51):
But the, the people from thatapartment complex would just
up, and they, they would justsort of resolve their issues one
There was no sort of legalprocess or
You know, I mean, theseissues have to get resolved,
but I think there maybe issomething problematic about
process that we attach certainideals to—
(34:11):
and then somehow havingit play out in that way.
Yeah.
And it made me think a lotabout this
to figure out the system or theplan that would, um, somehow
the number of people in thatline, right?
You know, you also highlightedthe way
handed in, uh, whose side theytake
(34:32):
by, uh, for example, limitingthe amount of, uh, additional
landlords could charge for laterent.
And I could just imagine that,you know, a judge might have
every time that charge islevied against
less likely to be able to paytheir rent on time in future
(34:53):
That it's just placing thatperson at greater jeopardy of
in that judge's court down theline.
And that sense that access tojustice might help somebody with
earlier upstream from whatmight, uh, snowball into a, a
more costly challenge down theline.
(35:15):
How do your students respond toor engage
I would imagine it really mayappeal to students who want to
open that idea of expanding anotion of both procedural
um, sort of who wins versus wholoses.
So I teach...
I teach a few different classesat the Law School in this vein,
(35:37):
and I think students have foundall of them to be pretty
I teach one class called Accessto Justice, appropriately
and the main purpose of theclass is to really get students
to understand what it feelslike and
as someone who has very littleto no variety of challenges and
obstacles thattalked about in these articles
(35:59):
as well.
So I think part of it isgetting their
complicated statutes andprocesses,
you know, how those appearto someone in that position.
But then they're also challengedto think more creatively and
affirmatively about solutions.
In law school, we spenda lot of time critiquing.
It's very easy to pick apart,it's a lot harder to actually
(36:20):
come up with solutions.
And so part of what they do isalso think about things like
literacy and the use oftechnology.
And they're, they're tasked withcoming up with a discrete
not these sort of big, loftypolicy goals,
you know, like suggesting thewhole system is underfunded.
But instead, "What's somethingthat you could create that a
court could implement next week?
Or a legal aid organization?"They craft these things, and
(36:41):
they actuallybut I bring external folks in
and representatives from thesejudges to actually give them
feedback.
And I've taught this class formany years,
But in some situations, theorganization actually said, "You
This is a great idea, andwe're gonna use this.
We're gonna implement it." [Farout.]
And to me that's a huge win.
Yeah.
(37:01):
Not only did the studentlearn, but they actually did
something that's gonna benefit.
Right.
And, and in law school, wespend a lot of time ... clinical
education is largely important.
But I think it's also reallyimportant for them to
not just to understand how ittranslates through a
relationship, but that lawyerscan have
We, um, I implemented thissemester with, along with our
(37:23):
Dean for Public Interest BethCruz, a court-watching practicum
where students just observecourt.
Because what we, what I'dheard, and
work, was that students justreally found watching court
because it's so differentfrom what they talk about.
It's not televised versionsof...
No!... court drama,but really watching court.
It's not "Judge Judy," but it'sreally quite fascinating stuff.
And I, and, and we havepractitioners who work in these
(37:47):
sort of give the students, youknow, some
But there's no substitute foractually just going to court
and seeing, again, because somuch of what we talk about in
schools is highly formalized,right?
We spend a lot of timeon Supreme Court cases.
We spend a lot of time onfederal court—
and that is extremely important,and some of our students will
practice in that in area—but as I said before, that's
not most ofand so I think students kind of
(38:10):
have toUm, and the, the last class
I'll mention,which is new, has been really
interesting.
It's an Access to Justiceclass that's focused on legal
education and empowerment.
And I have the students ...
crafting an Access to Justicebut they are then bringing it
to studentsAnd they're essentially
(38:31):
facilitating a discussion aboutsubstantive justice, procedural
justice,what does it mean to have access
to justice—with women who are ina very different position,
right?
They have some, perhaps,overlaps in experience,
but in a lot of ways have avery different perspective on
this, given their own position.
And I think it's reallyfascinating
to have these conversations—notjust in the law school
(38:52):
Or not just with you,which is really fun today.
But with people who'vereally been through this ...
Right.
...with a very, um, concretecost.
Yeah, absolutely.
And are those students'experiences sometimes
Do they end up finding thatthings that they thought were
I mean, I love thecounterfactual in
(39:14):
I'll tell you thatI had one student ...
But it's kind of cool instudent experience, too, right?
We left class ... when we leftthe prison
stopped taking notes at onepoint 'cause
Which, to me, that's, that's ahuge win.
Yeah.
Right.
And those students, you know,when I used to teach Capital
in Georgia, um—I've taught ithere, but I haven't been able to
(39:34):
I would take students to DeathRow, right?
And so you're not just learningabout ...
we spend a lot of time talkingabout the cases, right:
Here's what the Eighth Amendmentmeans, and here's how it plays
And here all the Supreme Courtcases that are really important
to know because these are thebases for claims that people
But it's also important for youto know, whether you're gonna
defense attorney or aprosecutor,
what happens after the case?
Where is this person spendingthe rest of their life?
(39:57):
And so I think really makingthings concrete for students,
much in the way that I tryto bring this, this empirical
data into these discussions,I think that's really important.
That's super important.
I love that you balance thatwith very, uh, very distal
that has some majorimplications.
You talk a little bit aboutwhat does it
(40:19):
and creating data sets thathave such
You know, when we think abouta predictive analytic framework
for disease progression,the assumption is that we're
gonna prevent or at leastthe progression of that disease.
Um, if it's about predicting whomight commit a crime or who
(40:40):
be found legally liable in acivil case, it's super costly to
And, um, it might be deeply,deeply unjust to make that
basis of whether it's socialaddress or a
personnel in a under-resourcedschool with
(41:02):
That there are ways in whichavoiding the concrete or
the concrete could be quiteconcerning, if not, uh,
Um, and I didn't know if youwanted to talk a little bit
On one hand, you wereadvocating beautifully for this
opportunity to have better data,and on the other, you were also
really weighing the challengesum, thinking about
(41:23):
de-identifying those data andthat don't put people in
jeopardy.
I think, we were really awareof that in, in doing this, and
we tried to frame it as,the concerns that you might see
coming from that, as beingtwofold.
One backward-looking, right?
So if you sort of tie this perall these person's touchpoints
(41:44):
that could give people a reallygood sense of their whole past
people might not want thatrevealed for
It could hurt them in lookingfor a
you may just not want people toknow, right, all these things.
And yes, it's possible to getthat information individually,
but if you make it easier, it'seasier for someone to access it.
Um, but I also think we hadfears, as
(42:04):
using this in a predictive way,right,
in the same way that predictivepolicing has been used—and
might be made, not just aboutcertain people, but about
And you know, I think part ofhow we
making data available aboutpeople is
And I think there are some waysfrom an empirical perspective
(42:24):
that you can work around this—either by only making aggregate
data available, by restrictingof the data in different ways,
by adding in ... usingtechniques, some of which are
far beyond my pay grade,but like differential privacy,
which sortat individual, you know, pieces
of data.
So I think that thereare ways around that.
I think the key is just beingreally aware of those concerns
(42:47):
So when you are thinking abouthow to
it, how you're storing it,right,
how you're going to allow forcreating an identifier—just
those things into the process.
I don't think those fearsshould all, that should prevent
us from going down this road.
I think just thinkingabout those things upfront.
Yeah, the solvable problems,but ones Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
(43:08):
And just to close, um, Lauren,I'd love
to do next or where you're,you're headed.
Obviously, you have incrediblyamazing track record of academic
leadership effort, uh, both intraining students and in terms
thinking and, and legal, uh,thinking.
But where, where would you liketo take this work going forward?
(43:30):
So I guess I'll, you know, I'dlike to do all the things all
But if I had to talk about twopieces of it, I would say with
initiative that you mentionedthat I'm starting here at
Part of what I'd like to dowith that
legal education more broadly,and much in the way that this
I'm teaching this semester isdoing, right?
So thinking about how to createreally clear modules about
(43:53):
aspects of access to justicethat could be used not just in
schools—undergraduateinstitutions, right, community
things that would make ...
basic information about how thelaw works available more
broadly—so sort of this broadened sense
of civic education, but withrespect to the legal system.
And I think in doing that,not just generating and making
(44:14):
that information available,but actually generating it with
the input and help of people whobeen directly impacted by the
system,I think that's really important.
The other thing that I hope todo, um, in
that I think pulls a lot ofthis together.
Um, I think broadly just todemonstrate as we've been
(44:34):
how courts in our existingsystem have been designed by and
And yet most people using itdon't have a lawyer, will never
lawyer, and that really createsa big gap between theory and
So I think really showing thepublic that gap in a sense,
um, and the fact that we'vecreated a system that's nearly
impossible to understand or use—and yet that's a system that
we either force or have peoplerely on to resolve these really
(44:55):
major problems in their lives.
Um, so I think taking this ideaof a not just it would, what it
would meanWhat would it mean for legal
services providers and whatit mean for legal education?
Thanks to our listeners fortuning in.
Remember to stay curious andkeep exploring new ideas.
(45:17):
We'll be back next time withanother guest
Until then, I'm Cybele Raverand this is Quantum Potential.
The Quantum Potential podcastcomes from Vanderbilt
(45:38):
Your host is C. Cybele Raver.
Thank you to our guest, LaurenSudeall.
Production by Matriarch DigitalMedia.
For more information aboutQuantum Potential, go to
vanderbilt.edu/quantumpotential.
Stay curious.
If I think about these papers ora lot of the work that I do,
(00:02):
you could think about some ofit as addressing these blind
There are these areas thatwe're just not focused on, and
probably why I've been drawnto a lot of the work I've
a lawyer, but also asan academic.
People are thinking abouteviction, but they're not
it in ... in these places,right?
They're thinking aboutcivil legal needs, but they're
it with respect to thispopulation.
(00:23):
And I think not only is itimportant, but I think
real lesson here forthinking about
people just feeling ignored orbeing left out of a narrative
and what happens, right?
And part of what happens, atleast in the legal system, is
respect, right, and trust inthe courts.
Today I'm so excited tointroduce Lauren Sudeall, who
joined Vanderbilt Law in 2023and who directs our Access
(00:44):
to Justice Initiative.
Lauren's research focuses onhow lower-income individuals
system—with or without alawyer—and her work has been
like the Columbia and Harvardlaw reviews.
(01:09):
Welcome to Quantum Potential,a podcast dedicated to
My name is Cybele Raver, and Iserve as the provost of
As a leader in higher educationand as a social scientist,
that we can transform highereducation for the 21st century.
At my core, I am wildly curiousabout other people's
(01:30):
in science, the social sciences,the humanities or the arts.
This podcast gives us theopportunity to break open new
discovery and creativeexpression.
Before joining academia, Laurenclerked for Judge
(01:51):
on the 9th Circuit andJustice John
She also worked at the SouthernCenter for Human Rights,
indigent clients facing capitalcharges, and advocating
to counsel in Alabamaand Georgia.
Lauren is a member of theAmerican Law Institute
an associate reporter onhigh-volume civil adjudication.
With degrees from Yaleand Harvard Law School
(02:13):
of the Harvard Law Review,Lauren brings deep expertise
and insight to Vanderbilt.
We are so lucky to haveher with us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to have you, Lauren.
Really exciting.
I was really captivated by yourwork, specifically addressing
the needs of everyday people.
This idea that there are somany people in this country
(02:35):
don't have access to legalrepresentation.
You have a great paper called"Creating a People-First Court
where you really set out toreframe and reorient legal
understanding for analyzingcases and shifting that to
understanding people'slaw by looking at court data in
a fundamentally different way.
(02:56):
I'm fascinated by that, the ideathat if we took a
approach, that we would seepeople's experiences across
of court proceedings, differentencounters with the legal
Can you tell us a littlebit more about that?
Sure. Courts are meant to servepeople, ultimately, and so in
ways, I don't think this shouldbe a particularly radical
(03:19):
They're meant to helppeople resolve disputes,
things that come up in everydaylives:
things relating to your housing,to your family, to your job.
And yet the way in which courtsare designed are, for the most
by lawyers and for lawyers.
And the reality is that mostpeople in navigating the legal
system today don't have alawyer,
so not only might they befrustrated by some of what they
(03:40):
and what they encounter isprobably very different from
but it actually makes itdifficult, if not impossible,
them to resolve these issues.
One piece of that that we triedto address in this paper was
thinking about what courts aretracking or how they're tracking
fact that they track casesmakes sense,
that's sort of how theyview the world, right:
How many cases are theymoving through their system?
(04:01):
How fast can they get throughthem?
But the problem is the way inwhich they see the world doesn't
to see what that experience islike from the individual's
So my colleague, CharlotteAlexander, and I set out to try
conceive of the systemdifferently.
That required a lot ofrestructuring of court data,
which took us about a year—which should maybe show you
how difficult it is to actuallyreconfigure the data in this
(04:22):
way.
But what we hoped that wouldallow us to do was to think
courts and the court process ...
not through the lens of thecourts and
but instead through the person,right?
A person may have multipledifferent touchpoints with
over a long period of time, andwe wanted
points and get a really broadpicture of what their experience
(04:45):
It made me, as you werespeaking, immediately think
you know, this university.
What if I, in my role asprovost, only focused on classes
and I never asked what was astudent's experience moving from
Or what was the student'sexperience of
And that idea of seeing thesystem from
(05:06):
of service or from theinstitutional perspective
way in which individuals arenavigating those systems ...
But to do that, you did thisamazing thing methodologically,
You actually basicallycompletely took
and I just thought it would bereally helpful if you tell us a
(05:28):
about what you did in terms offinding this random set of a
out of tens of thousands ofcases in
I think one thing to point outis that we were
how we had to approach thisbecause of
So we did most of thisthrough data scraping,
(05:48):
and one of the challenges was,was we had to figure out where
We couldn't just sort of getthis whole universe of cases.
We had to have a more targetedbeginning.
So we started, for a fewdifferent reasons, by
who had criminal cases.
Part of why we did that isbecause criminal court data
information about demographics—things like race and gender—and
we wanted to have thatYet civil cases often don't
(06:10):
have that information.
So we knew one benefit ofstarting with that data set is
we would have that information.
The downside of that is that itdoes mean that the data set we
limited to people who had someengagement with the, with the
We weren't able to capturepeople who had no engagement
that part of the system at all.
But essentially we went througha process of identifying a group
(06:32):
and then ... using thosepeople, ran
systems to try to get all of thecases affiliated with those
This was a complicated process,in part because we also had to
disambiguate people who hadsimilar names and trying to
cases truly were of the sameperson.
So we went through a very long,complex process to do that,
(06:52):
and in the end also had to getrid of some cases where we
be sure that we were actuallydealing with the same person.
But what we were ultimately leftwith was this data set of ...
all of the cases that sprungfrom the
through this criminal case dataset.
Amazing.
And when you did that,if you could just give us a
sense or a feeling of, uh, whatlevel of, not only that you were
(07:15):
confident that you foundbut the sense that people
did in fact have multipletouchpoints with different
courts?
I think the findings, um, thatwere yielded from that paper
surprising from my perspective.
So you get a sense, right, notonly of how many cases each
average, but things like whatare the
(07:37):
what is the sequence of thosecases?
What is the average amount oftime that
Um, I mean, there's so muchmore.
This is in a way isreally just the beginning.
It's sort of, we, we framedthis as
that it would be so difficultto do.
But our hope is really todemonstrate the kinds of things
find, more so than the entireuniverse of what you might find.
(07:58):
Um, but to give sort ofone more concrete example:
So if you think about howdifferent case
of the things that we saw waswe looked
Um, so we looked at peoplewho'd experienced one eviction,
and we were able to see thatpeople who'd experienced a
30% of those people had anothercase follow in the same year.
(08:21):
For people who had experiencedserial evictions, so multiple
evictions with the samelandlord,
those people had a 56% chanceof having And for people who had
experienced eviction withlandlords, the number went up
to 80%.
So ... we were careful to notmake claims about causation
but I think that might suggesta relationship, for example,
(08:42):
between housing instability andfuture legal engagement.
The fact the more, sort of,intensely you're experiencing
that might sort of ... haveripple effects
and I think, to me, that'sa really important finding.
Absolutely.
I ... I'm so glad you went tothat point
causal claims from those data,but instead pointing out that
(09:07):
misfortune begets moremisfortune somehow,
that, um, families areexperiencing multiple challenges
and that they cascade in a waythat, um, certainly aligns with
experience poverty-relatedstressors:
That housing instability andfood insufficiency and job loss,
can sometimes co-occur in waysthat are profoundly, uh,
(09:29):
to families.
But I think that way in whichyou saw
really poignant, but alsoreally telling.
And that you were very carefulto steer out of where I think
we often get stuck, honestly,which is um, "Well, so is that
really a problem of proneness tobe evicted on the individual
side?
Or proneness of the court to,uh, generate
(09:55):
problem that it, uh, leads to afamily to be more unstably
Right—this idea that having a writ
against you leads you toa ... more difficult time
getting a lease in your nextSo that idea that you're
avoiding those causal claims,but you do have this really
great way ofdamage or collateral
(10:15):
consequences.
Can you talk a littlebit about that construct?
Sure.
One point that I just wanted tomake, I think, that touches on a
things that you've said is ...
the, theyour analogy to the university
context, I think is anit's, it's broken into these
silos, and it sort of neatlypackages things and labels them.
(10:35):
Whether it's civil, criminal,right? History, English, law—
but yet the reality forpeople's lives
of different issues, and oftenthere's a lot of overlap between
Not only might one issue lead toanother, but one incident can
touch many of these differentcontexts, right?
So, um, I think domesticviolence is a good example of
(10:59):
Somebody ... one incident ofviolence could
It might require that somebodyelse get an order of protection,
which is a civil matter.
It may involve needing torelocate in terms of housing.
It may involve a lot of familylaw issues—divorce, custody—
and yet these issues are placedin all different parts of the
when the reality is a person isdealing with this one issue and
(11:21):
has all of these things thatneed to be ... need to be
So I think the way in whichwe've constructed the system is
mapped well onto, onto people'slives,
which means it's not very, it'snot efficient for the courts and
really work well for courtsbecause they
certainly doesn't work well forthe people
Yeah, I mean, I think that wasso well put regardless of cause
(11:46):
uh, causal effects, uh, andwhich, uh, issues are driving
issues that, uh, reallycomplicate families' lives or
courts and this, the nonprofitorganizations that are
providing services to families,still have to manage and or
have, um, approaches to meetingindividuals' needs.
(12:08):
And this way in which aproblem-focused court, whether
court or family court, takes onthose additional subsequent or
preceding instances, at leastit tries to,
immediately I thought aboutthe ways in which your students
must have had a phenomenallyclearer understanding of that—
having done thispeople-centered effort to code
(12:29):
the data, um, rather than a, acentered, uh, coding of the
data.
And I wondered how much yourstudents, um, are interested
in that more holistic approach,or whether they view it as, um,
sort of Well, it is...
it is a massive challenge.
(12:49):
I don't think any one person orany one court can address all of
but I think the reason thatdata is so important is because
it gives us some sense of whatthe landscape even looks like.
Part of why we wanted to do thisproject is because by not
or making data available in thisway, it really masks this entire
different way of seeing thesystem.
Which... you're right that itmakes the problem seem maybe
(13:12):
even larger in some sense,but I think it's a good
starting point—not just for courts to think
about howthey should create problem
solving orcan deal with multiple
different issues.
But it also, as you sort ofalluded to, helps legal service
about how to structure theirservices.
There are already a lot ofexamples of this with public
(13:33):
offices that do use socialworkers
or public defender officesworking with legal aid offices
sort of address variousdifferent problems that someone
But I think, as you weresaying, it's
understand that when they'rerepresenting clients, they're
In law school, we'reguilty of the same siloing.
I'm one of the very few people,I think, that I know in the
(13:56):
really, who thinks about bothof these different contexts.
And I feel really fortunate tohave practiced on the criminal
but yet a lot of my researchrelates to the civil side.
So I often find myself as sortof the
civil access to justice, whohas a lot
And similarly, I find myself inconversations with criminal
and scholars who aren't reallythinking about the civil system.
(14:18):
And I think for students italso is
creative thinking about, right,how to
I have a paper that I knowwe're not talking about today,
but it's called"Delegalization,"and the idea is taking ideas
behind decriminalization andabout whether any of those ideas
could apply to the civilAnd I think it's straddling
(14:38):
those two worlds that allows meto think about how concepts
might translate from one sphereIn your papers, um, I was
(15:03):
really impressedquantitative data and
qualitative data.
And that you interviewed, youknow, legal aid staff members,
you interviewed court clerks,you interviewed judges,
you interviewed publicdefenders—
that way in which you werecollecting the perspectives of
(15:24):
stakeholders or participants inthat, sort of, universe of
Can you tell me a little bitabout what ... how did they see
What was it like driving around?
You know, when I think aboutanother of your papers that I
talk about where you're insuburban and rural counties in
was their view of you as aHarvard Law,
you know, recently trained, uh,faculty member who's now at
(15:47):
And how did it all work interms of your own experience?
It's a good question.
Um, and you know, part of whatI have
been able to do in the lastseveral years
where not only do I get to learnabout these issues in the field,
but learn from colleagues.
And also bringing law studentsand graduate students into that,
to learn from each other andfrom...
(16:07):
[Absolutely]people in different disciplines.
So, and you know, to your pointabout mixed-method research ...
to me, I almost find it hard tothink about doing research, at
regard to these issues, in anyother way.
Because the quantitative datagives you
have a human element to ... toit
and doesn't really explain whyall the
So part of what I really lovedabout that project was not only
(16:30):
of what was happening in thesecourts,
but, as you mentioned, talkingto the people involved.
And we felt like it was reallyimportant to get the perspective
of a number of different people,so the judges, clerks and court
personnel who in these courtsthinking about state and local
courts—play a really outsizedTalking to tenants,
talking to landlords,talking to law enforcement
who are, you know, servingthings on
(16:53):
So that was really important.
And as to, right, my role in it—it is sort of an irony.
I'm someone who's spent alot of time in major cities.
I'm from the Northeast, so I'mnot of
a lot of time practicing in theSouth in
And I was really struck whendoing that
(17:15):
I would be in on a day-to-daybasis ...
and how different they werefrom what
but even what I would've hadhave conceived of as what
a court was or should be.
Um, so that, to me,being immersed as an academic
and thinking about these issues,it, it struck me that a lot of
the research similarly wasbig urban courts and maybe
leaving this other piece of theYou know, there you are clerking
(17:36):
in a, in a Supreme Courtand then you're in very small
counties—uh, in very small rural
counties in the U.S. South.
To me, that must have justbeen a tremendous contrast,
but perhaps, uh, maybe yousaw similarities across both.
I was just fascinated to thinkabout your CV on the one hand,
(17:56):
uh, you know, what I knew aboutyou from, um, all your
and then you as a datacollector, as a person out in
um, and how different or similaryour experiences must have been.
Well, we spend so much time, oreven in
I teach we don't necessarily dothis— but we spend so much time
focusing on such a small part ofThe number of cases that
(18:17):
actually make it to the SupremeThey're incredibly important,
but they're also incrediblyWe're talking about, right,
dozens of Yet state courts, thepercentage of
that are in state court day today are, right, nearing 98, if
(18:37):
We're talking about a lot ofcases, and this is where most
people spend their time.
So to me it's sort of shockingthat we don't spend more time
and thinking about these courts.
And, and think to your,to your other question,
being a lawyer doing thiswork is sort of interesting
because, and on one hand Ithink it
other disciplines don't alwayshave.
(18:59):
I think at least I found fromdoing work with sociologists and
they were amazed at the levelof access I was able to get,
I think, because there was sortof this sense from judges of
you know, you're one of us andwe can
But at times there was also, Ithink, some skepticism or almost
I was there with another agendaor to sue them for violations
(19:19):
I was, I was going to find.
You were in the know, but atI assuaged them, I convinced
them thatas a lawyer seeking to file a
lawsuit.
So there was that tension.
But more so, I think itgave this level of access,
which again is, I think,another real
is that you have someone whohas sort
and maybe has that access butdoesn't have knowledge around
(19:41):
right quantitative methods.
Um, and so I think bringingthose things together gives you
really good, more detailedpicture of what's going on in
Absolutely rich readingand very detailed,
but also theoretically reallyfascinating.
I love that you raise in youreviction paper, this idea
of multiple axes of justice.
The praxis and paradox oftenants' and, and landlords'
(20:04):
going to court and workingthrough the different ways in
state eviction laws are applied.
One of the things that was verymoving to me was that the way
were applied could lookcompletely different in
depending on the rurality ofthe court,
depending on how many cases camethrough that particular court—
and the way in which, um,you're really addressing what
(20:27):
people come to court hoping for.
I don't know if you would liketo read what the metrics of, uh,
justice are.
In assessing the data resultingfrom this study, we found it
to consider multiple axes ofjustice against which case
(20:47):
and outcomes may be assessed.
One obvious set of metricsrelates to substantive outcomes:
Who won and who lost?
Was a monetary judgment awarded?
And if so, how much?
Was a writ of possession issued?
And was the tenant ultimatelyevicted?
Another set of metrics weconsidered in assessing the
quantitative and qualitativedata were
(21:07):
Was the process by which theoutcome was reached perceived as
Was one party unfairlydisadvantaged?
I think that notion of "was itperceived as fair versus did I
um, and that idea that peoplemight have come out of court
feeling that they were fairlytreated, even though they lost—
it speaks to such a, again, adual lens on what the court is
(21:34):
And in that paper you describethe way in which judges—perhaps
surprisingly, perhaps not—wereopen to giving people their day
their ... their opportunity tobe heard,
even if it meant that most ofthe time those people in court
(21:54):
uh, postpone or have reducedtheir amount of rent owed, for
um, they might not win on thatfront.
But they, they, theymight at least feel heard.
Can you say a little bit moreabout that?
One of the most surprisingthings and interesting things, I
that emerged from the study wasthis contrast between um,
(22:15):
justice and substantiveoutcomes.
So there's this really deepliterature on procedural justice
importance of people feelinglike they were heard and
or perceiving the process asfair— in part because it affects
people's view of the courts andthey view the system as
legitimate.
And I think what wasinteresting ...
and this relates to, I think,a, a broader
(22:36):
what you already pointed out,the very
you have the state law applyingacross all these different
outcomes can be wildlydifferent.
I wrote another paper, thatwe're not gonna talk about
at how eviction preventionmeasures that were promulgated
government and by state courtsactually played out in state
And what you see is they playedout in wildly different ways
(22:59):
depending on the state,depending on the court.
Um, so that's, that'sanother conversation.
So you have these courts thatare, that are operating very
and there's a narrative, Ithink, around eviction court—
and I think a lot of largerurban courts—that they're
this mass processing of cases,so cases are flipped through
one by one after another, andin these courts you get very
little procedural justice.
(23:22):
And so part of what wasinteresting is what we saw was
counter to that narrative,right?
In one case, we, you had a courtthat actually called people to
make sure that the time of thehearing would work for them—
set aside, dedicated time forpeople to hear their—which
is unheard of in a appeal.
Well, no, of course,'cause I grew up in New York
City, the idea that the courtcheck to see if you were
coming, right?
Right.
Or just, right,or setting aside, right,
(23:43):
specific assigned hearingtimes. And there was a real
for the, for both sides, right—particularly the tenant—to tell
their story.
We talked to judges who reallyexpressed this priority that
have their day in court and thatpeople be able to tell their
But that didn't at all map ontobetter substantive outcomes.
(24:04):
And part of why that is, isbecause you can give someone the
opportunity to tell their story,but if they have no idea
how or whether that story isrelevant in the context of the
law,not only might it not make a
difference, but it mightSo one example is a tenant says
in response to an evictionnotice: "I owe rent, but I
pay it because I lost my job.
(24:25):
I was in the hospital.
I had to pay a hospital bill."These are things that people,
sort of, at a natural levelsort of social realities, right—
that's how they respond.
"You hear me.
You see me, you understand the,the challenge or the plight that
Right?
And the court says, "Sure,you know, tell us your story."
They write it down.
And then when it gets processedthrough the court, the court
"That is a legally insufficientanswer"
(24:46):
because that's not a defenseunder the
even having a hearing in courtsometimes.
So there's this real disconnect...
And in fact, they've admittedto nonpayment, right?
Right.
There's a real disconnectbetween, right,
it may on some level seemto be procedural justice.
But it's only sort of thishalf-hearted version of justice
because you're really not givingpeople any information as to
how they're supposed to use thatopportunity when they are being
(25:09):
Yeah.
And that conclusion, um, I haveto say going into the paper was
not what I expected, right?
It was a surprising set offindings and conclusions.
That in airing one's grievancesor getting a hearing, it doesn't
always work out for the tenantand could lead to a worse
And that this idea that informalprocedures for procedural
(25:31):
not a substitute forsubstantive justice.
That's such an incrediblypowerful position to
I think a lot about the, anadditional paper that we had the
read, that talks aboutindividuals who've
had previous civil courtengagement around things like,
(25:55):
um, where they weren't given anyguidance or support in thinking
or even knowing about, um, whatkind of legal, uh,
have had in those previousinstances.
So that that sense of trusting asystem is impossible if you
even know that that systemexists.
Just phenomenalin terms of thinking about all
the space there is to developfor people's access to justice.
(26:20):
Can you tell us a littlebit more about that?
Sure.
When I think in a lot of ways,or if I think about these papers
or a lot of the work that I do,I think you could think about
some of itThere are these areas that
we're just not focused on.
And I think it's probably whyI've been drawn to a lot of the
work I've done, both as alawyer, but also as an academic,
People are thinking abouteviction, but they're not
(26:41):
it in ... in these places.
They're thinking about civillegal needs, but they're not
it with respect to thispopulation.
And I think not only is itimportant—and
I don't wanna bring inpolitics, but
for, right, thinking aboutpeople just
a narrative and what happens,right?
And part of what happens, atleast in
(27:04):
respect and trust in the courts.
Yeah.
Um, so take what you will forthat in, you know, in our
But I think, you know, lookingat these blind spots is ...
not only to sort of shine alight on what's happening—
because the people there arejust as
but I think they give us theseunique opportunities to learn
may be playing out in adifferent context.
Which maybe you can't generalizethat to make a conclusion about
(27:27):
the whole system, but it canteach you something really
Right.
You know, the, the articlewe were talking about before:
We're looking at these smallercourts when we're used to
about these bigger courts,right?
We learned something from thatabout the relationship between
justice and substantiveoutcomes,
where if you just looked at thelarger courts, you might think
two are correlated or makeassumptions about why that's
(27:48):
And I think we tellthese narratives, right?
Just one small example is ...
we talk about ...
talk about how there's thisasymmetry as to who gets a
So in a lot of these biggercourts, you have 90% of
represented, but just 10% oftenants.
And that's this commonnarrative that
Well in these smaller courts,right, you've ... tenants almost
(28:11):
never have representation.
I think in the article we talkabout the fact that most judges
on one hand during their timeon the
seen a tenant with an attorney.
But the landlords alsodon't have an attorney.
The judge is often not anattorney.
So you have this world where,right, issues are being resolved
the legal system, and there'snary an attorney in the picture.
(28:32):
Is that a good thing?
Is that a bad thing?
I actually don't know.
And I think I'm not willingto make assumptions without,
right, researching it more.
But it certainly gives us avery different
Um, with the article that youwere sort of referencing in the
there's been not enoughresearch done,
research done on civil legalneeds.
(28:53):
But often people who areincarcerated are left out of
And that's for, I think, anumber of different reasons.
I think some of it has to dowith the siloing of the system,
also siloing of academics,right?
Academics typically focus onone or the other, so you don't
often get people thinking aboutthe civil legal needs that
people who are incarcerated maynot as related to their
criminal conviction,not related to collateral
consequences,but just everyday civil legal
(29:14):
needs thatUm, and I think it also
may be for other reasons.
So for example, the LegalServices Corporation, which
legal aid offices across thecountry, they don't allow those
work with people who areincarcerated.
So there is this sort ofpractical or
But I think you can learn a lotof really interesting things
(29:37):
or, and also think about reallyinteresting points of
when you're talking about apopulation that is in a very
(30:02):
How is that working in terms ofthe way in which you're leading
Vanderbilt, both with studentsand in terms of, uh, what you're
to do either locally orregionally or nationally in
up that issue of access tojustice?
Is that a message that isheard at the local level? Is it
heard at the national level?
How does that play out?
(30:23):
So I, well, I think again, here,I often end up playing this role
of the ... the blind spotidentifier.
And I, there's a lot of ironyin the
who's well known for speakingabout rural courts when I've
lived in a rural place in mylife.
I'm from Boston, I've lived inmajor cities across the country.
But again, I think it's morejust this inherent need to
the bigger picture and seeinghow this is playing out
(30:47):
I think there's a real tensionin the
to come up with solutions thatcan be
But as you were saying, whichwhich is really real, is that
every court is different,every jurisdiction is different.
And so both trying to come up,right, sort
but also knowing that they'regoing to
(31:09):
context and for particularcourts.
So I think that's been achallenge,
for example, with the projectthat I'm working on through
the American Law Institute onhigh-volume civil adjudication,
where we're trying to come upwith procedures and suggestions
courts operating in thecontext of
thinking about how those courtsreally need to operate
to actually serve the goals offairness and accuracy and
(31:33):
And trying to come up withsolutions that can be thought
sort of national broadsolutions,
knowing at the same time thatultimately every court is going
these things for the realitiesof the
Yeah, and it seems to me justeven the
forms that people had to fillout, led to different ... or led
(31:57):
different paths of disclosure,right?
That perhaps forms shouldn'tgive people, you know, a legally
insufficient prompt for ananswer that they would then be
tempted to give, but doesn't...
isn't gonna help them in anyway, right?
Right.
Or the, I mean, one of thecrazier things that we thought
at least that we saw was inone of the smaller courts,
um, and we talk about this inthe article,
(32:17):
they're basically given threeoptions:
I admit the claims. I deny theclaims. And I request a payment
What's so strange about that...
that doesn't sound likesomething you would say in a
where what's at issue islitigating, sort of, the nature
But I think it is a reflectionof how
eviction actually works inpractice.
Right.
There's another judge I thinkthat we, that we quote that we
(32:40):
through the legal aid attorneyswe interviewed who said, "All I
is that you pay the rent. We'renot here to litigate your case."
think people went to courtthinking that
And yet, the reality is a lotof these courts do function—
and I'm not laying theblame purely on them, right,
it's a function also of the lawand of a lot of other things—
but they do function essentiallyas rent collection agencies.
(33:04):
And so this ... the fact thatthe form which in itself is sort
of an admission, right?
Seems problematic to me if whatwe're thinking about is what
the court's role and why peopleare in court to resolve
It makes complete sense inhindsight,
or now that we crack itopen and look at it, right?
But probably wasn't really inthe minds of the person writing
(33:29):
Right.
I think that they probably justhad a
In that same court, you know,people would come to court,
and there was one—it wasa fairly rural county—
there was one apartment, Ithink, built
and, by the way, this court washeld in a ... in a essentially a
building that also housed thelocal jail,
I think, sort, of shifting ourideas of or how it might feel.
(33:51):
But the, the people from thatapartment complex would just
up, and they, they would justsort of resolve their issues one
There was no sort of legalprocess or
You know, I mean, theseissues have to get resolved,
but I think there maybe issomething problematic about
process that we attach certainideals to—
(34:11):
and then somehow havingit play out in that way.
Yeah.
And it made me think a lotabout this
to figure out the system or theplan that would, um, somehow
the number of people in thatline, right?
You know, you also highlightedthe way
handed in, uh, whose side theytake
(34:32):
by, uh, for example, limitingthe amount of, uh, additional
landlords could charge for laterent.
And I could just imagine that,you know, a judge might have
every time that charge islevied against
less likely to be able to paytheir rent on time in future
(34:53):
That it's just placing thatperson at greater jeopardy of
in that judge's court down theline.
And that sense that access tojustice might help somebody with
earlier upstream from whatmight, uh, snowball into a, a
more costly challenge down theline.
(35:15):
How do your students respond toor engage
I would imagine it really mayappeal to students who want to
open that idea of expanding anotion of both procedural
um, sort of who wins versus wholoses.
So I teach...
I teach a few different classesat the Law School in this vein,
(35:37):
and I think students have foundall of them to be pretty
I teach one class called Accessto Justice, appropriately
and the main purpose of theclass is to really get students
to understand what it feelslike and
as someone who has very littleto no variety of challenges and
obstacles thattalked about in these articles
(35:59):
as well.
So I think part of it isgetting their
complicated statutes andprocesses,
you know, how those appearto someone in that position.
But then they're also challengedto think more creatively and
affirmatively about solutions.
In law school, we spenda lot of time critiquing.
It's very easy to pick apart,it's a lot harder to actually
(36:20):
come up with solutions.
And so part of what they do isalso think about things like
literacy and the use oftechnology.
And they're, they're tasked withcoming up with a discrete
not these sort of big, loftypolicy goals,
you know, like suggesting thewhole system is underfunded.
But instead, "What's somethingthat you could create that a
court could implement next week?
Or a legal aid organization?"They craft these things, and
(36:41):
they actuallybut I bring external folks in
and representatives from thesejudges to actually give them
feedback.
And I've taught this class formany years,
But in some situations, theorganization actually said, "You
This is a great idea, andwe're gonna use this.
We're gonna implement it." [Farout.]
And to me that's a huge win.
Yeah.
(37:01):
Not only did the studentlearn, but they actually did
something that's gonna benefit.
Right.
And, and in law school, wespend a lot of time ... clinical
education is largely important.
But I think it's also reallyimportant for them to
not just to understand how ittranslates through a
relationship, but that lawyerscan have
We, um, I implemented thissemester with, along with our
(37:23):
Dean for Public Interest BethCruz, a court-watching practicum
where students just observecourt.
Because what we, what I'dheard, and
work, was that students justreally found watching court
because it's so differentfrom what they talk about.
It's not televised versionsof...
No!... court drama,but really watching court.
It's not "Judge Judy," but it'sreally quite fascinating stuff.
And I, and, and we havepractitioners who work in these
(37:47):
sort of give the students, youknow, some
But there's no substitute foractually just going to court
and seeing, again, because somuch of what we talk about in
schools is highly formalized,right?
We spend a lot of timeon Supreme Court cases.
We spend a lot of time onfederal court—
and that is extremely important,and some of our students will
practice in that in area—but as I said before, that's
not most ofand so I think students kind of
(38:10):
have toUm, and the, the last class
I'll mention,which is new, has been really
interesting.
It's an Access to Justiceclass that's focused on legal
education and empowerment.
And I have the students ...
crafting an Access to Justicebut they are then bringing it
to studentsAnd they're essentially
(38:31):
facilitating a discussion aboutsubstantive justice, procedural
justice,what does it mean to have access
to justice—with women who are ina very different position,
right?
They have some, perhaps,overlaps in experience,
but in a lot of ways have avery different perspective on
this, given their own position.
And I think it's reallyfascinating
to have these conversations—notjust in the law school
(38:52):
Or not just with you,which is really fun today.
But with people who'vereally been through this ...
Right.
...with a very, um, concretecost.
Yeah, absolutely.
And are those students'experiences sometimes
Do they end up finding thatthings that they thought were
I mean, I love thecounterfactual in
(39:14):
I'll tell you thatI had one student ...
But it's kind of cool instudent experience, too, right?
We left class ... when we leftthe prison
stopped taking notes at onepoint 'cause
Which, to me, that's, that's ahuge win.
Yeah.
Right.
And those students, you know,when I used to teach Capital
in Georgia, um—I've taught ithere, but I haven't been able to
(39:34):
I would take students to DeathRow, right?
And so you're not just learningabout ...
we spend a lot of time talkingabout the cases, right:
Here's what the Eighth Amendmentmeans, and here's how it plays
And here all the Supreme Courtcases that are really important
to know because these are thebases for claims that people
But it's also important for youto know, whether you're gonna
defense attorney or aprosecutor,
what happens after the case?
Where is this person spendingthe rest of their life?
(39:57):
And so I think really makingthings concrete for students,
much in the way that I tryto bring this, this empirical
data into these discussions,I think that's really important.
That's super important.
I love that you balance thatwith very, uh, very distal
that has some majorimplications.
You talk a little bit aboutwhat does it
(40:19):
and creating data sets thathave such
You know, when we think abouta predictive analytic framework
for disease progression,the assumption is that we're
gonna prevent or at leastthe progression of that disease.
Um, if it's about predicting whomight commit a crime or who
(40:40):
be found legally liable in acivil case, it's super costly to
And, um, it might be deeply,deeply unjust to make that
basis of whether it's socialaddress or a
personnel in a under-resourcedschool with
(41:02):
That there are ways in whichavoiding the concrete or
the concrete could be quiteconcerning, if not, uh,
Um, and I didn't know if youwanted to talk a little bit
On one hand, you wereadvocating beautifully for this
opportunity to have better data,and on the other, you were also
really weighing the challengesum, thinking about
(41:23):
de-identifying those data andthat don't put people in
jeopardy.
I think, we were really awareof that in, in doing this, and
we tried to frame it as,the concerns that you might see
coming from that, as beingtwofold.
One backward-looking, right?
So if you sort of tie this perall these person's touchpoints
(41:44):
that could give people a reallygood sense of their whole past
people might not want thatrevealed for
It could hurt them in lookingfor a
you may just not want people toknow, right, all these things.
And yes, it's possible to getthat information individually,
but if you make it easier, it'seasier for someone to access it.
Um, but I also think we hadfears, as
(42:04):
using this in a predictive way,right,
in the same way that predictivepolicing has been used—and
might be made, not just aboutcertain people, but about
And you know, I think part ofhow we
making data available aboutpeople is
And I think there are some waysfrom an empirical perspective
(42:24):
that you can work around this—either by only making aggregate
data available, by restrictingof the data in different ways,
by adding in ... usingtechniques, some of which are
far beyond my pay grade,but like differential privacy,
which sortat individual, you know, pieces
of data.
So I think that thereare ways around that.
I think the key is just beingreally aware of those concerns
(42:47):
So when you are thinking abouthow to
it, how you're storing it,right,
how you're going to allow forcreating an identifier—just
those things into the process.
I don't think those fearsshould all, that should prevent
us from going down this road.
I think just thinkingabout those things upfront.
Yeah, the solvable problems,but ones Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
(43:08):
And just to close, um, Lauren,I'd love
to do next or where you're,you're headed.
Obviously, you have incrediblyamazing track record of academic
leadership effort, uh, both intraining students and in terms
thinking and, and legal, uh,thinking.
But where, where would you liketo take this work going forward?
(43:30):
So I guess I'll, you know, I'dlike to do all the things all
But if I had to talk about twopieces of it, I would say with
initiative that you mentionedthat I'm starting here at
Part of what I'd like to dowith that
legal education more broadly,and much in the way that this
I'm teaching this semester isdoing, right?
So thinking about how to createreally clear modules about
(43:53):
aspects of access to justicethat could be used not just in
schools—undergraduateinstitutions, right, community
things that would make ...
basic information about how thelaw works available more
broadly—so sort of this broadened sense
of civic education, but withrespect to the legal system.
And I think in doing that,not just generating and making
(44:14):
that information available,but actually generating it with
the input and help of people whobeen directly impacted by the
system,I think that's really important.
The other thing that I hope todo, um, in
that I think pulls a lot ofthis together.
Um, I think broadly just todemonstrate as we've been
(44:34):
how courts in our existingsystem have been designed by and
And yet most people using itdon't have a lawyer, will never
lawyer, and that really createsa big gap between theory and
So I think really showing thepublic that gap in a sense,
um, and the fact that we'vecreated a system that's nearly
impossible to understand or use—and yet that's a system that
we either force or have peoplerely on to resolve these really
(44:55):
major problems in their lives.
Um, so I think taking this ideaof a not just it would, what it
would meanWhat would it mean for legal
services providers and whatit mean for legal education?
Thanks to our listeners fortuning in.
Remember to stay curious andkeep exploring new ideas.
(45:17):
We'll be back next time withanother guest
Until then, I'm Cybele Raverand this is Quantum Potential.
The Quantum Potential podcastcomes from Vanderbilt
(45:38):
Your host is C. Cybele Raver.
Thank you to our guest, LaurenSudeall.
Production by Matriarch DigitalMedia.
For more information aboutQuantum Potential, go to
vanderbilt.edu/quantumpotential.
Stay curious.
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Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com